the world, and all making plans to attack the United States. We’ll finish up in England, and it won’t take that long; probably “til mid-winter, and then we’ll go somewhere else to fight again. France, Hawaii.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows? But by that time, General Jefferys will have hard intel that someone is planning on attacking America and we’ll sail back to do it all over again. We’ll clean it up again, and then we’ll sail off somewhere else to fight somebody else’s battles for them. That’s what Americans — and a precious damn few of her allies-have always done.”

Buddy stared at her for a moment. “So you think we’ll all be back in America by … when?”

“A year, tops.”

Buddy looked at his father. Ben smiled. “She’s probably right, son. Irish intel and the BRF told me that a few large ships pulled out of Irish and British waters before we arrived. Then after the invasion, more ships left. Right before we took Dublin, still more ships pulled out. One hit an old derelict mine and was sunk. The survivors told the BRF they’d been heading to Hawaii to link up with gangs there. So I imagine that Hawaii is our next stop.”

“Palm trees, coconuts, and hula girls,” Cooper said, having recovered from his seasickness. “Especially the hula girls. That’s for me.”

“Any hula girl that would take up with you would have to be mentally retarded,” Jersey told him.

Cooper shot her the bird and she returned it, twice.

Ben glanced at his watch. “Eight hours to jump-off time, folks. Let’s start inflating those boats and loading equipment.”

The trawlers carrying Ben and his teams reached their destinations an hour and a half early. By ten-thirty the teams were in the landing craft and preparing to shove off. And it was a good thing they were early. The seas were picking up and it was going to rain just about the time the Rebels reached shore.

“You’ll make it before it gets really rough, General,” the skipper called from the railing. “Godspeed to you all.”

“Everybody got their life vests on?” Ben shouted.

Everybody did. Cooper had two.

“Let’s do it,” Ben ordered.

The rubber boats roared off into the darkness, the rolling and swelling vastness of the sea all around them. Each boat towed a second filled with equipment that was lashed down tight. It cut their speed considerably, and they were forced to stop a half dozen times before they found the right towing length and could adjust to it. Then they were on their way.

Long before they reached the dark shoreline, the sounds of planes reached them, all flying in from the west.

“I hope one of those pilot-less bastards don’t crash on us,” Beth remarked.

“That thought did cross my mind,” Ben said.

Lights popped on in and around Plymouth and wild shooting could be faintly heard. But the shooting quickly died away as the planes flew on and disappeared into the darkness.

A light rain, no more than a drizzle, began to

fall. One by one, the lights on the shore blinked out as those in the small city felt the danger had passed.

“Idiots,” Ben muttered. “Kill the engines,” he called.

The night was suddenly very quiet.

“Paratroopers on the ground,” Corrie said. “Special ops teams moving.”

“Paddle,” Ben ordered, unlashing a paddle.

It was hard work, especially since they were towing a craft, but the shoreline soon leaped into view.

“Rat Team ashore,” Ben whispered. “Everybody else rest their muscles.”

They bobbed on the water for a full fifteen minutes, easy targets should the docks be guarded and a flashlight be directed their way.

“There is no one on the docks, General,” Corrie relayed the message from the Rat Team.

“What?”

“Nothing, sir,” Corrie repeated. “The docks are deserted.”

“My God, but we’re a lucky bunch. Let’s go, people,” Ben said, picking up his paddle. “Hard now.”

The rubber rafts were pulled ashore and the Rebels quickly unlashed their equipment and loaded up.

“The Colonists have arrived, Your Majesty. Just hang tough.” Ben looked at his team. “Welcome to England, folks. Corrie, get me the paratroopers” position.”

“The main force is about ten miles north of the airport,” she said. “Pat and his contingent of Free Irish went wide of the DZ and landed right in the

middle of a small village. Scared the crap out of a bunch of folks. Pat went right through a thatched roof and landed in bed with a man and his wife. Almost gave them a heart attack.”

Everyone around who could hear chuckled at that. Pat was a pretty good hand at cussing, and they all imagined he did some fancy swearing when he hit the bed.

“Dan and his team have taken over an old building that used to be a lunatic asylum about fifty klicks north and east of here. They’ve been there three days and nights and haven’t spotted a thing.”

“We heard shooting,” Cooper remarked. “We know they’re here. So where the hell is everybody?”

“Pulled back into the cities,” Ben said. “But they’ve got to have patrols working comsomewhere. They can’t be this stupid.” He stood up from his kneeling on the ground. “Let’s secure the docks, folks.”

The Rebels did not encounter a single person as they worked the dock area. Ben set up his thin lines and laid out Claymores. And did it all without firing a shot.

Ben knelt down in the hollow emptiness of a huge old warehouse and studied the map of the harbor and the area around it. He came to the conclusion-again-that there was no damn way a unit this size was going to hold the harbor for any length of time.

Ben tensed. He smelled the bastard coming up behind him. A stinking creepie. He threw himself to one side just as the creepie jumped for him, the knife flashing through the air. Ben rolled to his boots, stepped forward, and kicked the creep in the

nuts. As the cannibal doubled over, his mouth open to scream out the pain from his busted balls, Ben rared back and socked him on the jaw. The smaller man dropped like a stone and Ben stepped back, rubbing his knuckles.

“What the hell, General?” Jersey said, running through the open door of the warehouse. She pulled up short at the sight of the creepie on the dirty and littered concrete floor, Beth, Corrie, and Cooper right behind her.

“So we do have people in the harbor area,” Corrie said.

Outside, the wet night was shattered by gunfire and screaming.

“Corrie,” Ben said. “Give the signal. All units attack, all units attack.”

Buddy appeared in the open doorway. “If you don’t mind, Father, would you and your team kindly step outside and give us a hand? We seem to be under attack by a rather large and hostile group of people.”

“God damn it!” West roared through a bullhorn. “Get those boats over the side and get in them. Move, God damn it, move!”

It was a strange invasion by modern standards. The Rebels had only a few military-type landing craft, and those had already shoved off. The rest of the first two full battalions were getting to shore in rubber dinghies and anything else they could throw over the side and hook a motor to.

As Ben always said, “It was a hell of a way to run a war.”

Thermopolis received a frantic message from Emil, who was captaining the ship carrying Rebet’s Six Battalion. “The goddamn ship is dead in the water, Therm. We hit something. Probably a nearly submerged old tub. It bent the shaft and probably sheered the blades off the prop. We ain’t goin’ anywhere, brother.”

“What is your location, Emil?” Ike broke in.

“Right off Lizard Point, General.”

“Put your troops ashore there and tell them to fight their way north to Bodmin. Secure it.”

“That’s a ten-four, General.”

Rebet’s men began tossing dinghies over the side and scrambling down ladders.

“Lower the lifeboats!” Emil yelled to some of his people. “Abandon this tub. We’re going ashore with Rebet.”

“May God have mercy on my soul,” Rebet muttered.

“Get that equipment over the side!” Striganov roared like an angry bear. “The general is under heavy attack.” Striganov jumped over the side, holding onto the rope ladder. His boots missed the rung and he fell into the cold waters of the western edge of the English Channel. Luckily he was wearing a life vest and he popped to the surface, flailing his arms and cussing in Russian.

One of his men tossed him rope and pulled him in. The young soldier could not get the grin off his face. He tried, but he could not wipe it clean.

“You think it’s funny?” Georgi roared.

“Yes, sir,” the Russian Rebel said honestly, and

then burst out laughing.

“Well …” Georgi said, heaving himself into the boat. He lay on the deck of the lifeboat for a moment, then a grin cut his craggy features. “I guess it is, at that. Come on, son, we have a war to fight. Wet drawers and all,” he laughed.

“Striganov just fell into the ocean,” Corrie told Ben, during a slight lull in the fighting.

“Is he all right?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

Ben shook his head. “Anything else I need to know?”

“Emil’s ship is dead in the water. Rebet is taking his battalion ashore at Lizard Point. Ike’s orders.”

“Who’s picking up Emil and his bunch?”

“No one. Emil gave the orders to abandon ship and he’s joining Rebet’s battalion.”

“God grant him the strength to maintain his sanity. You in contact with the jumpers?”

“Still north of the airport, traveling as fast as they can. Some of them have commandeered bicycles and are pedaling their way in.”

Ben ducked his head and laughed. The idea of heavily armed paratroopers riding into combat on a bicycle was funny to him.

“They’re trying an end-around,” a Rebel called from Ben’s right. “Between warehouses at two o’clock.”

“They’re in trouble,” Ben said.

The words had just left his mouth when the Claymores blew and parts of street punks were slammed against the old wet walls of both warehouses.

“This way!” the voice was barely audible over the

screaming and moaning of the wounded. “Watch them mines. The rest of you, follow me.”

He tripped a wire and one side of a warehouse blew up in a flash of fire and debris. Ben looked at Buddy.

“I found a bag of fertilizer and several drums of gasoline,” his son explained. “I thought the fertilizer might be too old to work. I was wrong.”

“How much gas was in those drums, boy?”

“Fifty-five gallons in each, I suppose. They were full.”

The old wood of the warehouse was burning brightly now, and the Rebels could clearly see dozens of bodies lying in unnaturally twisted positions.

A dozen street punks rushed Ben’s position. An M-60 started belching out lead. The punks folded up and went down like dominoes.

“Fall back!” someone shouted. “It’s the invasion. Jesus Christ, look at all them people in the bay. Back to the city, back to the city.”

Ben turned around. Rebels from Four and Seven Battalions were storming ashore, climbing over old rusting cars and trucks and machinery.

“God must be on our side,” Ben muttered. “Either that, or we’re dealing with the dumbest bunch of bastards on the face of the earth.”

“The first of Rebet’s troops have landed and not a shot has been fired,” Corrie said. “They have encountered no resistance whatsoever. Dan’s teams are now engaged in a firefight with an unknown group.”

West and Danjou came panting up to Ben’s position. “Where is all the resistance?” West asked, catching his breath.

“It came and went,” Ben told him. “Corrie, advise our people to disarm all remaining Claymores they set. Danjou, West, have your men stay to this side until that is done, please. Buddy, take your Rat Team and Scouts and see what’s up ahead of us. And somebody clear out a building and make some coffee. We’ve got a toehold in England, people. But it’s a big damn island.” Chapter Two

By morning, the entire dock area and several blocks all around it on all sides had been cleared. Not that there had been all that much to clear out. The only shot fired was when a very large rat — about the size of a well-fed housecat comran across a Rebel’s boot in a dark, cobwebby, and musty warehouse and scared the crap out of him. The rat got shot.

“I wonder how it got so large?” the Rebel questioned.

“Probably by eating body parts thrown away by those damn creepies,” his buddy told him.

“Barf!”

The paratroopers had reached the edge of town and were setting up positions. And the street punks in Plymouth who had not thrown in with Butch and the others were scared.

“Corrie,” Ben asked, “have you found the frequencies of the punks in this city?”

“Yes, sir. Several of them. They’re a real smart bunch.” She said that with the sarcasm dripping. “With the most advanced communications equipment in the world at their fingertips, they’re using CB’S.”

Ben grunted. He looked at the BRF commander who had joined them during the night, coming into the harbor by motor launch. He and his men were all tough-looking and handled their weapons in the seemingly casual way an expert does. “This is the way we do it, Drake,” Ben told him. “You might not like it, and I don’t particularly care whether you do or not. It works for us. We usually give the enemy one chance to surrender. After that, we don’t take prisoners. There have been exceptions, but not many. How do you want to play this?”

The Englishman stared at Ben, knowing then that all the rumors about him were true. Ben Raines was a hard man. “It’s your show, General. If you can live with it, so can I.”

Ben nodded his head. “Corrie, use your, ah, CB and contact whoever is in charge of the gangs.”

“Standing by, sir,” she said, after only half a minute.

Ben took the mic. “This is General Ben Raines. To whom am I speaking?”

“My, my, ain’t you the proper one, now,” the jeering voice came out of the speaker. “To whom is I talkin’, huh? Well, you talkin’ to Ace. What’s on your mind, Mister Big-Shit General?”

“I’m talking about whether you live or die, punk. And this is your only chance to surrender. Lay your guns on the floor, on the sidewalks, in the street, wherever you may be, and come walking out with your hands in the air. This is the only chance you are getting.”

There were several moments of silence from the city. Ace finally came back on the air. “You gonna kill us all, General?”

“Every goddamn one of you,” Ben said, enough ice in his voice to cause Drake to take a step back away from him.

“Supposin’ we fight you and see that we can’t whip you, General? Can’t we pack it in then? I mean, we soldiers just like you, man.”

Several Rebels laughed at that.

“No, you’re not,” Ben told him. “You’re a bunch of no-good murderers, thieves, rapists, and God only knows what else. I have absolutely no use for any of you. I shouldn’t even offer you surrender terms. But I will, one time. And this is that time. Take it or leave it, punk.”

“I ain’t no punk!” Ace screamed. “But I do run this city. So fuck you, Raines. Just fuck you, man. Fuck you!”

“Fellow seems to have a rather limited vocabulary,” Buddy remarked.

“He won’t have it long,” Ben replied. “Corrie, give the orders to take the city.”

The gangs in the city were well armed, but they had no real knowledge of warfare, guerrilla, urban, or conventional. Ben Raines’ Rebels smashed into the city. Tanks rolled in first, with the Rebels following. The street gangs who controlled Plymouth took one look at what they faced and were horrified.

“Jesus Christ, Ace!” a gang member yelled. “That’s a real fuckin’ army.”

“So is we,” Ace replied. “We stand and fight.” He looked around him. “But not here. Fall back to the center of town.”

Ace had just exited the building near the harbor area when an MBT, cannon lowered,

blew the old home apart with HE.

The creepies were the only ones to put up much of a fight. But there were few of them remaining in Plymouth. Most of them had slipped out hours before the invasion began, heading for London and Birmingham and other cities. They left their prisoners behind, after hosing them down with machine-gun fire. The members of the cannibalistic sect were the most vicious and utterly worthless bunch of people the Rebels had ever fought. The Rebels had tried to rehabilitate some of them and had yet to find one who would respond to treatment.

Ben Raines had then given the orders: any creepie found would be shot on sight.

The taking of Plymouth was the easiest any Rebel could remember. By nightfall of the first day, most of the gang members had fled the city, using alleys and tunnels dug or enlarged by the Believers, or by using escape routes the smarter ones had mapped out long ago.

“They left their children behind,” the news was reported to Ben. “Dozens of them. The bastards and bitches just deserted their own kids.”

Ben had expected that. He’d seen it too many times back in America to be shocked. “As we secure the countryside, we’ll find foster homes for them. Take them to that hospital Chase is cleaning out.” He shook his head. “It’s always the children and the old people that suffer the most in war. Seems like I’d be used to it by now.”

By noon of the third day of the invasion, Plymouth was declared secure. “Incredible,” Striganov said.

Ben’s Rebels were reporting from all over the surrounding countryside that thugs and punks and other assorted human crud were surrendering in large numbers; the Rebels were taking so many prisoners it wasn’t uncommon to see one Rebel, wearing an expression of disbelief, walking along behind two dozen prisoners with their hands on their heads.

Ben ordered all prisoners to be turned over to the British Resistance Forces.

“You try them,” Ben told the commander of the BRF. “You do what you want to with them. But I tell you this much right now: The Rebels are arming the general public. And we’re arming them well. Don’t even entertain the thought that society will return to what it used to be here, or anywhere else the Rebels have been. We’re not expending time and effort in building prisons, and I’ve a hunch the good people of England will follow our lead. I don’t want to have to come back here in any other capacity except as a visitor seeing the sights.”

“You don’t believe in giving a person a second chance, General?” a woman asked.

“That depends on the crime, lady.”

Rebels had secured several smaller coastline towns on the westernmost tip of Wales, and Ben shifted two battalions over to that section of the country, one of them Thermopolis and his Eight Battalion, now that he was no longer needed to captain the big ships.

If the hardworking and tough people of Wales had had access to firearms, the thugs and punks and creeps would never have taken that section of the country. But England had long had very restrictive

guns laws-decades before the Great War-and its citizens never had a chance when the criminals made their move. Politicians never seemed to learn that criminals paid absolutely no attention to gun laws.

The Rebels in and around Plymouth began the awesome job of clearing out the countryside and pushing out of Cornwall and into Devon County.

“No stinking damn politician will ever take my guns again, General,” an elderly farmer told Ben, after he had stopped to chat with the man. “By God, they’ll have to kill me to do it.”

“You can bet that when some order is restored, someone will sure try,” Ben replied.

“They’ll rot in the ground shortly after they do,” the man said grimly.

“The next town up is infested with human vermin,” the man’s wife said. “Their behavior is disgusting.”

“We have just the cure for lice, ma’am,” Ben told her. “We’ve found they respond well to lead.”

She laughed, gave him a piece of pie, and wished him luck.

“Says here,” Beth said, reading from a tattered old tourist guide as they rolled up the road, “that the next town on this highway has good food and hospitality.”

“Sounds delightful,” Cooper said. “You suppose they’ll roll out the red carpet for us, General?”

“Somehow, I rather doubt it.”

“Buddy says hold the column and for us to come on up,” Corrie said. “He’s on the outskirts of the town now. The gang holding the town is going to fight.”

“Why does he want me up there? Tell him to take the damn town.”

Corrie relayed the order and listened for a moment. “The gang leader has marched the citizens out and is hiding behind them. People of all ages, including young children and babies.”

Ben muttered a few highly uncomplimentary phrases about thugs in general. “Corrie, ask Buddy if there is a back door to this town.”

“That’s ten-four, sir. Rebels could work their way into the town through the woods and slip in that way.”

“How far off this road?”

“Just off this road. Take a road running straight back west just after crossing a bridge. We’ll see a stone fence running alongside for extra concealment.”

Ben smiled. “Tell my son to keep these goons busy with conversation. Let’s go, Coop. Corrie, tell my bodyguards to lag behind a good quarter mile. When we stop, they stop. No tanks. That’s a direct order. I want to check out the woods and the stone fence.”

They parked on the low side of a small hill and got out silently, being careful not to bang any doors. They squatted down behind some thick brush and inspected the scene. They could see no one posted at the rear of the town.

“Surely they wouldn’t be that stupid,” Ben muttered.

He carefully inspected the area through binoculars and could see no sign of life.

“Corrie, tell the platoon to come up on foot, fast and silent. Stay in the ditch, close to the brush.”

Ballard, the platoon leader, was the first at Ben’s side.

“Lieutenant, we’re going in the back door,” Ben told him. “Nice and quiet.” He pointed a finger at him. “Your people, follow my people. Let’s go, gang.”

“I ain’t gonna tell you this but one more time, dude,” the thug in charge of the town told Buddy. “Carry your funky ass on away from here.”

“You’re not English, are you?” Buddy asked.

“No, I ain’t. Now move, “fore I start killin” these folks here. They belong to me, I can do what I want to with them.”

“They’re your slaves?”

“That’s right. Now carry your ass like I told you, man.”

Ben and his people had left the woods and were now in the town, working their way toward the pile-up of people near the junction. Many of the homes they passed had bullet-holes in them, windows gone and doors missing. This town had been the center of many battles over the years.

“Across the street,” Ben whispered. “Just to the left of that stone cottage. See the two men?”

“I see them,” Ballard said. He motioned for two Rebels to go.

The other Rebels waited while the pair worked their way across the street and got into position for a silent shoot or a throat cutting — whichever seemed more appropriate. The two Rebels Ballard had sent carried silenced pistols for close-in work.

A few moments passed before Corrie received the word. “It’s all clear over there, General. They say

we can cross over now.

In teams of three and four, the Rebels crossed the littered street at a run. They passed by the bodies of the thugs, each with a tiny hole in his head from silenced .22 caliber autoloading pistols.

“Hey, slick,” the gang leader said to Buddy. “Are you retarded or something? I told you carry your ass on away from here. Are you nuts? You wanna die?”

“We all have to die sometime,” Buddy told him. He was inwardly seething with rage at the sight of the ragged and bruised and starving children and old people. He kept his composure only with immense effort.

Buddy estimated about one hundred male gang members and probably fifty to seventy-five female members, all heavily armed. The women were some of the trashiest-and sluttiest-looking females Buddy had seen so far.

Buddy picked up movement far behind and on either side of the gang, all spread out on the road and on both sides of the junction. Rebels, silently working their way toward the crossroads, led, of course, by his father.

Buddy’s Rat Team was spread out left and right of him.

“Man,” the gang leader said. “I’m gettin’ tired of jackin’ around with you. I’m fixin’ to start shootin’ these slaves if you and them others don’t carry your asses on away from here. You got ten seconds to move.” He lifted his pistol and pointed it at the head of a weeping young girl.

“All right!” Buddy said. “We’re backing off. Let’s go, team.”

As he spoke, Ben and his platoon were drawing closer.

“And I mean get totally out of sight and leave me and mine the hell alone in this town,” the punk shouted.

“I assure you,” Buddy said, “that in a few minutes, you will never be disturbed again. And that’s a promise.”

One of the female gang members grabbed at her crotch and hunched her hips at Buddy as she grinned an invitation.

“You have to be joking,” Buddy muttered, as he and his team began slowly backing up.

Ben and his people were almost in position. If only one gang member cut his eyes left or right, or looked behind him, the ambush would be compromised and a lot of civilians would be dead. Even if they didn’t, Buddy knew that several of the slaves would surely be cut down by gunfire, some even by friendly fire.

“You ain’t movin’ very fast,” the gang leader said. “Shove off, prick.”

“We’re surrounded!” a punk yelled, whirling around and spotting the Rebels on all sides.

“Hit the ground!” Buddy yelled at the slaves, as a Rebel bullet punched a hole through the head of the gang leader.

The men and women dropped flat to the road, pulling their kids down with them as lead began whistling above their heads. The gang members panicked and tried to run. They didn’t make it as Rebels comwho had been silently working their way into position-popped up all around them.

It was over in a minute, and as always, the silence

after combat was slightly unnerving. Corrie radioed for the medics to come up as Rebels began checking over the slaves. The enemy received medical attention last-Ben Raines’ orders.

One elderly man had been killed and one woman received a slight flesh wound.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Ballard said to Ben.

“Yes. We got lucky,” Ben said, looking around him at all the human garbage lying in their own blood. Many were still alive. The medics ignored them until they had checked out the civilians and the Rebels.

“Bastards,” the woman who had made the obscene gesture to Buddy said. “Heartless bastards.”

“You’re calling us heartless?” Jersey said to her. “Hey! I know you. We chased your ass out of Texas. Dallas/fort Worth area. I remember your ugly face. You were ram-rodding a gang of street punks over there. Yeah.”

The woman had a hole in her side and was obviously in great pain. But her hatred for law and order and justice overrode her pain. She spat at Jersey. The spit fell short of Jersey’s boot.

“You spit on me, bitch,” Jersey warned her, “and I’ll punch your ticket right now.”

“What are you going to do with us?” a punk moaned from his position on the road. He had taken a 7.62 round in the leg and the leg was twisted and broken.

“Turn you over to the British Resistance Forces,” Buddy told him. “They’ll deal with you.”

“Oh, man,” another whimpered. “They’s gone back to hangin’ folks over here. We’re all

Americans, just like you. Cut us some slack, man.”

Buddy turned his back to the punk. He had an almost overwhelming urge to shoot the bastard.

“You’re General Ben Raines,” a punk said, looking up at Ben. “I seen you before, back in Colorado. How’s about givin’ us a break, boss?”

Ben turned away without replying and walked over to the group of abused civilians. They were a pitiful sight, but one that he’d witnessed more times than he cared to remember.

“You’re all from this general area?” he asked.

They were.

“We’ll patch you up,” he told them. “And we’ll supply you with food to eat and grain to plant. And we’ll arm you. After that, it’s up to you. It’s doubtful that we’ll be back. Don’t ever let anyone take your guns again. No government, no politician, no punk. You all had the will to fight, you just didn’t have anything to fight with. Don’t let it happen again.”

Members of the BRF showed up and gave the prisoners some very hard looks.

“Don’t let them people have us, General!” a punk shouted. “They’ll hang us. For God’s sake, please don’t.”

“For God’s sake?” Ben said. “You, calling on God? He must be getting a good laugh out of this. And He probably needs one. Mount up, people, we have miles to go.” Chapter Three

Rebet and his battalion, aided by the BRF, quickly secured everything in the southern part of Cornwall and pushed on to reach Ben’s One Battalion. Battalions were regrouping now, the small teams scattered all over England linking up with units of the BRF. The Rebels soon learned that the thugs and punks and human garbage had no stomach for a fight with the Rebels … at least, not in the country.

“They never seem to learn,”’ Ben said, rubbing his eyes and leaning back in his chair. “They can’t understand that cities are death traps for them.”

“Yeah, Ben, but in this case, they don’t have any choice in the matter,” Ike said, at a staff meeting. “We thought we’d seen bad in Ireland. But, Christ, the punks and creepies have really raped this country … literally.”

Ben nodded his agreement. The advancing Rebel army had found living conditions to be appalling in most areas. The thugs and assorted crapheads were literally starving the people to death, forcing them to work the gardens and fields, and then taking the food, leaving the citizens not quite enough to get by on.

The people told the Rebels that the creepies had a number of large breeding farms around the country, but none of them could tell the Rebels where they were located.

Dr. Chase had been livid with rage upon seeing the hundreds and hundreds of malnourished children. And he had laid it on the line to Ben.

“Don’t bring any enemy wounded to my hospitals, Raines. None. I’ll personally cut their stinking no-good throats with a dull scalpel.”

“All right, Lamar. I’ll give the orders. What have you seen that’s set you off so?”

“I’ve seen babies who were raped and sodomized.” Chase’s words were filled with loathing. “Boys and girls. Every deviant sex act known to humankind … I’ve seen the aftermath of it here on this island in only the short time we’ve been here. I’ve seen battle-hardened doctors and nurses who have been with us since the beginning break down and weep at the stories from the mouths of children. I’ve personally witnessed hardened Rebel veterans with tears running down their cheeks as they carry in kids, or what is left of them, after being assaulted, tortured, maimed, mutilated, and left for dead. I have yet to hear one child, one adult, male or female, tell me of one single act of compassion from the disgusting, perverted … filth who have taken over this land. I’ve had my say. Goodnight. If you need me, I’ll be at the main hospital in Torbay.”

Ben issued the orders declaring the death sentence on any punk, thug, warlord, and the like who offered even the slightest resistance to the Rebels.

By this time, his communications people had

every frequency used by the enemy locked in. Ben went on the air and laid down the options available to the lawless. There were only two choices. “You will surrender now and take your chances in a court of law, or you will be hunted down by the Rebel Army, the British Resistance Forces, and the Free Irish Army, and you will be killed. We will stand down for twenty-four hours to give you time to make up your minds and seek out a Rebel, BRF unit, or Free Irish, and surrender. At the end of that time, no one will be taken prisoner. That is all.”

“He’s bluffing!” the warlords told their already spooked followers. “He ain’t gonna just shoot us down like animals.”

“No,” London Lulu said, after hearing the same from some of her followers. “He ain’t bluff in”. We’ve had it, mates.”

“What do you mean?” one of the group asked.

“The British courts will hang us, or the Rebels will shoot us. It’s just that simple.”

“But England done away with the death penalty a long time ago.”

“Don’t try to think, Sammy,” Lulu told him. “You ain’t no good at it. This is a new order comin’ out of the ashes, people. All them sobbin’, hankie-stompin’ folks that went easy on the likes of us is gone. There’s gonna be law and order now. And the only way that’s gonna happen is for them out yonder to get rid of us. You follow me now?”

“They ain’t gonna take us in London,” another said. “There ain’t no way that’s gonna happen. We know ever’ alley and tunnel there.”

“They took every major city in America,” Lulu

reminded them all. “And they didn’t even slow down doin’ it. No,” she said, shaking her head. “I got to get with Butch and we got to map out a retreat route.”

“This is it,” Butch told her. “I’ve got people out now gathering all the small boats they can find. We’ll stash them all up and down the coast. When the end is looking at us comand it will, kid; we can’t win this-we’ll set out at night for France and link up with them over there. Raines is going to clear the countryside first, saving the cities for last.”

“The cities is gettin’ all clogged up, Butch. People are comin’ in from the country by the hundreds.”

“I know. Those coming into London are being spread out on a line from the city down to Brighton. They’re blowing bridges and cutting up the roads west of their positions. As those who elect to fight protecting their turf fall back from Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, I’ll position them north of the city on the east side of the river. I’m already blowing the bridges, leaving just a few of them open for retreat. Once them that’s coming is across, those bridges will go.”

“It’ll buy us some time, for sure,” Lulu said. “But what if Raines decides to launch another attack by sea?”

“Then we’re fucked.”

Lulu smiled at him. “Speaking of that …”

Butch patted her denim-covered butt. “Might as well.”

“You’re so romantic, Butch.”

“They’re going to try to retreat using the Channel,”

Ben said, after reading intel reports. “Probably using hundreds of small boats that would be impossible to intercept and destroy at night. Especially if it’s foggy and they’ll wait for that, bet on it. What do we have on this Butch Smathers fellow?”

“Not much,” Georgi said. “But he’s had some military training. He’s making some smart moves.”

“All the special units are back with their battalions,” Ike said. “As well as those who jumped in. Thermopolis and his Eight Battalion have cleared the county of Dyfed in Wales and opened the ports there. He reports that resistance has been extremely light. His people found one of the creepie breeding and fattening farms,” Ike said, the words leaving a bad taste in his mouth. “Physically, the people are fine. Mentally, they’re in rough shape.”

“What is the word on those in Bristol?” Ben asked.

“They’re digging in for a fight,” Tina told him. “My battalion is standing by just south of the city. We’ve cleared Bridgewater.”

“That’s the last town of any size in Devon,” Ben said. “But Bristol is another matter. That’s a good-sized city. Over half a million before the Great War.”

“But a lot of the thugs ran like rabbits, General,” the commander of the BRF pointed out. “Our people tell me that no more than thirty five hundred to four thousand hardcore criminals remain in the city.”

“How about the general population?”

The man shook his head. “I have to say that those who chose to remain were slaughtered.

Either that, or traded to the Believers.”

“The birthplace of America,” Ben spoke the words softly. “A treasure-house of historical importance.”

“Not anymore,” the BRF commander said. “It’s been trashed and looted and vandalized over the years. Take it down, General Raines.”

“That’s the consensus of the people, Commander Drake?”

“It is, sir.”

“Out of the ashes,” Ben muttered. “We’ll try to save the more important landmarks. Where is the Methodist Chapel located, Commander Drake?”

The man smiled sadly. “It isn’t, anymore, sir. The hoodlums burned it.”

Ben sighed. When something like that occurred, the loss was deep, for history could never be replaced. “What else have the bastards destroyed?”

“Nearly everything that was priceless and precious to us,” the man replied. “England will not be rebuilt in our lifetime. These thugs and hoodlums have done more damage than the Nazis did more than half a century ago.”

“The university?” Ben asked.

“Trashed and vandalized. The books were all destroyed. They heaped them in piles and burned them. I have eyewitness accounts of that.”

“What do your people say about the punks’ armaments?”

“Light weapons. A few mortars and rocket launchers. The tanks and other modern equipment were simply too complicated for them to master. But the taking of Bristol will not be a walkthrough.”

“No,” Ben agreed. “It never is. All right, we’ll use three battalions, plus armor and artillery. My One Battalion, Dan’s Three Battalion, and Georgi’s Five Battalion. The rest of you, hold your lines. Commander Drake, your BRF people will continue the sweeping of the countryside down to the coast. All right, people.” Ben smiled and looked over at Jersey, sitting in a chair by the door, her M-16 across her legs. “What do you say, Jersey?”

Her dark eyes twinkled. “Kick-ass time.”

Those in Bristol who had chosen a life of crime and pitched their lot in with the Believers knew the sands of time had very nearly emptied the glass when the mist of dawn was abruptly shattered by incoming artillery rounds that rained down on their heads like some hideous storm.

Ben was throwing heavy artillery and mortar rounds at the center of the city while his Rebels smashed into the suburbs north and south of the river and caught those there by surprise. Those who tried to flee toward the east ran right into two battalions of Free Irish who cut them down with heavy machine gun fire. To the west lay the heavily patrolled Bristol Channel.

Ben ordered the thundering pounding to continue for an hour. Then he ordered tear gas to be dropped into the center of the city, canister after canister of it. For blocks in any direction, people were staggering around, unable to see. Then Ben ordered pepper gas to be dropped in, and that really caused the punks and crud and creepies some problems. The gas was by no means lethal, one

simply felt that death would be a relief from the choking and stinging.

When the creeps and crud staggered into a free-fire area, the Rebels cut them down. Some of the Brits (but not many) with the BRF thought this to be a bit on the barbaric side, and certainly ungentlemanly, but they kept their mouths shut and maintained a stiff upper lip.

“This offend you?” Ben asked a newly arrived observer from the BRF.

“To be truthful, yes, it does. But nothing that I can’t live with,” he added dryly.

“Want to get a little closer?”

“I thought you would never ask, General,” the distinguished-looking gentleman said.

Ben had tried to pinpoint the man’s age, but it was hard to tell. He might be anywhere from sixty to eighty.

Ben and his team and the BRF observer moved to within a block of the battle lines, which made the frontline Rebels awfully nervous. Ben ordered body armor and helmet for the seemingly unflappable Mr. Carrington and made the much older man get into the protective gear. Carrington carried an old bolt-action rifle which looked to Ben to be about a hundred years old.

“Ah, Mr. Carrington,” Ben asked, pointing to the rifle. “Will that thing shoot?”

“My heavens, yes. Certainly, it will. It functioned quite well at Dunkirk.” “Dunkirk! That was more than half a century ago! I wasn’t even born then.”

Carrington looked at Ben, a twinkle in his eyes. “Quite right,” he said, then returned his

attention to the battle lines up the street.

“Bastards!” a scream cut the morning’s chill. “Dirty, rotten bastards and bitches, all of you!”

A man appeared out of the fading fog of tear gas and pepper gas carrying an M-16. Carrington lifted his rifle, sighted in the man, and cut him down.

“Good show,” Ben said.

“Thank you, General,” Carrington said, as he worked the bolt and rammed home a round. “I do like to pull my weight.”

The streets suddenly filled with Rebels, all running back toward Ben’s position. “Get the general out of here!” one yelled. “We’re about to be overrun. They’re trying a suicide attack.”

Ben jumped out onto the sidewalk. “Stand your ground!” he yelled, stopping the Rebels. “Spread out left and right of me. Corrie, get Dusters up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, jolly good, I say, General,” Carrington said. “This is just the place for a to-do, I should think.”

“Quite right,” Ben said. The English manner of speaking is very contagious. “Corrie, call up gunships.”

“Yes, sir. Calling up gunships.”

“Here the buggers come, men!” Carrington said, then looked around him. Jersey was staring at him. She shook her head. “And, ah, ladies. Stand firm now for God and the King.”

“Right,” Cooper said, from behind his bi-podded Stoner. “And for Ben Raines and America.”

“Quite right, lad,” Carrington said, a flush to his cheeks.

They could hear the screaming and cursing mob quite plainly now.

“Hold your fire,” Ben shouted. “Hold your fire until they’re in the middle of the block. We’ll take the first wave and the choppers can have the rest.”

“Marvelous things, those helicopters.” Carrington’s voice could just be heard over the rantings of the thugs and creepies as they rounded the corner and began the charge up the last block to Ben’s position. “Wish we’d had them during World War Two.”

“Fire!” Ben shouted, and there was no more time for conversation that would have gone unheard anyway.

The ground floor of the old building reverberated with the sounds of weapons on full auto comall but one. Carrington was calmly working the bolt and making each shot count. “Damn!” he said. “I’m all out of ammunition. Drat!”

A Rebel medic couldn’t hear his words, but saw his predicament. He crawled over and handed the man two .45’s from his kit and a bag full of clips.

“Oh, good, lad! Thank you.” And Carrington was back in business with a vengeance, blasting away with both hands full of autoloaders.

The mob was right on top of them when the Dusters clanked up, lowered their cannon, and went to work. Overhead, helicopter gunships were just arriving and cutting loose with everything they had.

Thugs and punks and creepies and other assorted street slime hurled themselves through the glassless windows and the fight was hand to hand, eyeball to eyeball.

Knowing he was much too old to engage in this

type of nonsense, Carrington backed up, loaded up both .45’s, and began picking his targets in the gunsmoke-filled room. And he was deadly accurate.

Jersey kicked a thug in the balls and then shot him in the neck as he bent over, puking.

Beth had a Beretta 9mm in each hand and was holding her own in a corner of the room. Corrie had slipped off her backpack radio and was swinging her empty CAR-15 like a club, and doing some terrible damage to jaws and heads. Ben shot a creep in the belly and another one point blank in the face before a punk jumped on his back and rode him down to the dirty floor.

Ben flipped the man from him and Carrington blew the back of the punk’s head off with a round.

“By God!” the Englishman said. “I haven’t had this much fun since Mum got her dress tail caught in a revolving door and took her right down to her bloomers.”

Ben got to his boots as he realized the room was empty of live creeps and crap. “Load up,” he ordered.

Corrie found her radio under the body of a dead punk and looked at it. “Busted,” she said. “Took a round straight through.”

“We’re cut off, General,” a Duster commander yelled through a hole in the wall. “The street gangs did an end-around and we’re going to be all alone for a time.”

“Get on your radio and order constant patrol of this area by gunships,” Ben told him. “How’s your 40mm ammo?”

“We’re in good shape, General.”

“All right. Button down as tight as you can.”

Ben looked around him. The floor was two and three deep in places with dead punks and creeps.

“We’ve got two dead and five wounded,” Corrie told him. “One of the wounded is serious and needs surgery right now.”

“Not anymore,” one of the medics called.

“Three dead,” Corrie said.

“Let’s get these stinking dead crud out of here,” Ben said. “Careful in handling them, now. Strip ammo and weapons from them and stack them in the next room.”

“It’s clouding up real fast,” Lieutenant Ballard said. “Starting to sprinkle.”

“If it comes a downpour, that’ll work to the advantage of the crud,” Buddy pointed out. “And severely limit visibility for the chopper pilots.” He smiled through the grime on his face. “Of course, I’m pointing out the obvious.”

Carrington had taken a dead Rebel’s M-16 and another Rebel was showing him how to operate it. “Complicated piece of weaponry,” he remarked.

“How are Dan and Georgi faring?” Ben asked Corrie.

“Heavy fighting, sir. But in small pockets all up and down the line. Every time they shift, the crud shifts with them. A lot of small units are cut off, just like us.”

“Pretty good,” Ben said. “Someone on the other side is starting to think.”

“Here comes the rain,” a Rebel called.

“And with it will come the crud,” Ben said, clicking his CAR off safety and moving to a empty window. “Get set, people. It’s going to get real busy here in a moment.”

“Drat,” Carrington said, looking at his watch. “And they’ll be interrupting our elevenses, too.”

“Do what?” Jersey asked.

“Morning teatime,” Ben said with a smile.

“Precisely,” Carrington said. “Terribly boorish of them, what?”

“Oh, yes,” Ben agreed. “They have no appreciation of the finer things in life.”

“Quite right,” Carrington said. “For an American, General Raines … you’ll do. You’ll do.” Chapter Four

“If they’d played their cards right,” Ben said after the attack, “they could have done some damage to us. They had years to learn tactics, but they blew the time away.”

The creeps and street crud had charged out of the rain screaming and cursing the Rebels in small pockets all over the city. They ran right into the guns of the Rebels. The Rebels stood their ground and gave the enemy everything they had at their disposal, and that was plenty. It broke the backs of the creeps and thugs in Bristol.

The remainder of Ben’s battalion punched through to his position just after noon and took the pressure off. Ben set up a CP on the second floor of what had once been a department store and the Rebels began mopping up.

Mr. Carrington took a Tommy-burner out of his kit and began heating water for his tea.

Rebels began collecting the bodies of the dead crud and creeps and tossing them into the beds of trucks. They would be taken out into the countryside and buried in a deep mass grave.

“Three thousand enemy dead in this city,

General,” Beth informed Ben. “So far.”

“Tell the other batt comms to attack their targets commencing at dawn tomorrow. We’ll catch our breath here for a couple of days and then move on.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Gloucester had a population of about seventy thousand or so before the Great War. So there’s sure to be some nasties waiting for us. Send Buddy and his Rats on down to check it out. No heroics on his part, Corrie. Those are my orders. Just check it out and report.”

“Right, sir.”

Mr. Carrington strolled in. “I’ve just met two of the most astonishing people I have ever encountered,” he said. “A man named Emil and his keeper, a beatnik, I believe, called Thermopolis. This Emil fellow, is he mentally sound?”

Everyone in the room laughed. Ben said, “There are some who would argue the point. But yes, he’s stable … most of the time, that is.”

“Tell me about this Thermopolis.”

“He’s a hippie. And he’ll go back to being a fulltime hippie when the wars are won.”

“I see. I think. I would have stayed to chat longer with him but that horrible music that was playing in the background rather jangled my nerves. What is that incomprehensible throbbing called? It sounded like fourteen cats fighting over a ball of yarn.”

“It’s rock and roll, sort of. But not the rock and roll that I grew up with.”

“If one could somehow contain that wailing and blithering and caterwauling and ship it to

the enemy, the war could be won without firing another shot.”

Thermopolis and Emil came in and Carrington skirted them carefully and went outside.

“That’s a strange man,” Emil said, jerking a thumb toward Carrington. “Talks funny, too.”

Carrington beat it back inside the CP. “We’re being invaded by a band of leather-jacketed hooligans on motorbikes,” he announced.

Ben chuckled. “No. They’re part of this outfit. That’s Axehandle and his boys and girls.”

Carrington shook his head. “You have a very strange army, General. Very odd indeed.”

Ben enjoyed a laugh at that. “You’ll get no argument from me on that, Mr. Carrington. But you’ll have to admit, we get the job done.”

The old man smiled. “That you do, General. That you do.”

Ben toured the devastated city. It was evident that his artillery had destroyed a lot of buildings, but what was even more evident was that the creeps and crud had done a lot more damage over the years. It was vandalism for the sake of vandalism, without reason.

All the churches were gone. Every last one of them, from once magnificent cathedrals to small chapels … the street punks and creeps had destroyed them all. In museums and art galleries and curio shops, it was the same. Paintings and valuable books had been ripped and slashed and burned. Statuary had been toppled and smashed.

Now only occasional gunshots could be heard; the Rebels had just about concluded the mopping up of Bristol. No prisoners taken.

“He’s saving us for last,” Butch told a gathering of warlords and self-styled mercenaries and street punks. “Just like I figured he would.”

“All them people that was in Bristol,” one warlord said, “and no more’un a couple of hundred got out alive. Scares me. It really does.”

“It ought to, mate,” Butch said. “And you stay scared, too. It might help keep you alive. You keep this in your mind: the Rebels ain’t taking no prisoners. None. The deadline is past. Those are hard people out there, being commanded by a hard man. And don’t think you can surrender to no English man or woman, neither. “Cause most of them, more’un likely, will kill you just as fast as a Rebel. They ain’t likely to forget what-all we done over the years. Everywhere the Rebels go, they’re arming the people. They’re settin” up what they done in America. Them outpost things.”

“Butch, I got me an idea,” Morelund said. “Let’s let Raines and his Rebels have the island. Hell, man, we’ve ruint it anyways. We’ll go to Hawaii.”

The roomful of punks all began talking at once. Finally Butch shouted them into silence. “That’s a great idea, Morelund. Now maybe you’ll tell me how we’re gonna get there.”

“By ship!” Morelund said, exasperation in his voice.

“Do you know how to run one?” Butch challenged.

“Well … no. But, hell, they can’t be that hard.”

“Does anybody here know how to run one of those great ships?” Butch asked.

No one did.

“Well, folks,” Butch said, eyeballing the motley-looking group. “I guess that means we fight right here on English soil.”

“I guess that means a lot of us will die right here on English soil,” another said in a quiet voice.

“That’s right,” Butch said. “When civilization broke down, we all had a choice. Didn’t nobody force us into doing what we did.”

“But we had to eat,” a street punk said. “There wasn’t no jobs or nothin’. There wasn’t no law to make us behave. They wasn’t nothin’.”

Butch leaned his elbows on the lectern and chuckled. “Eakes, that is the biggest pile of horse-shit I’ve heard in a long time. There ain’t no excuse for what we done. There ain’t any. We’re criminals because that’s what we want to be. We’ve had a long run. More’un ten years. Now it’s time to pay the price for that decision.”

“Killin’ us is a goddam high price to pay,” Eakes said sullenly.

“And how many people have you killed over the years?” Butch asked, a smile on his cruel mouth. “Fifty, a hundred, a thousand? More than that? Probably. How do you excuse that?”

“We ain’t axin’ for no prizes for what we done,” a burly warlord called Santo said, standing up. “But now that we’s about to be caught or killed, why can’t the law treat us like they used to? I mean, give us some jail time and rehabilitate us and turn us loose?”

Butch laughed. “They really did a splendid job of rehabbing us, didn’t they? Aren’t we a bunch of model citizens? We’ve really worked to restore law and order to England, haven’t we?” He slammed a

fist onto the lectern. “God damn it, people!” Butch shouted. “We’re criminals. We’re rapists. We’re kidnappers. We’re slavers. We’re murderers and street punks and thieves and everything that’s mean and rotten and no good in this world. And we became that because we wanted it. Stop lying to yourselves. Make up your minds that we’ve got to contain Raines and the Rebels, giving us time to get across the Channel, or we’re going to die. All of us.”

“We’re gonna die anyway you cut it up,” a street punk said. “We can’t beat the Rebs. I’d as soon you just shot me now and got it over with.”

“All right,” Butch said. He jerked out a .44 magnum and blew half the punk’s head off. The street punk’s feet flew out from under him as his brains splattered those closest to him. He hit the floor, dead cooling meat.

“Anybody else?” Butch challenged.

The roomful of crap was silent for a moment. “Jesus, Butch!” Eakes finally said.

“Don’t Jesus me.” Butch’s voice was as hard as the lead that had punched through the punk’s head. “I ain’t your lord. But I just might turn out to be your savior. You’ve all got to listen to me and do what I fucking tell you to do! A long time ago there was some Yank that said we either hang together or hang separately. Well, that fits us nicely. If we don’t hang together, we shall certainly hang one by one.”

“All right. All right!” Duane said, getting to his feet. “I vote we make Butch the supreme commander of this army. We all follow his orders and do it without question.”

“I second that,” Mack said.

The vote was taken and it was unanimous.

“All I can say is, I’ll do my best,” Butch said solemnly. “Now somebody drag Jakes out of here before he starts to stink. We got a lot of planning to do.”

Ben and his battalions headed for Birmingham, which was not going to be nearly as easily taken as Bristol.

Birmingham was the second largest city in England before the Great War, with a population of over a million. While many of the gangs that had occupied the city had fled to London, several thousand hardcore gang members still remained.

The Rebels rolled through quiet little English villages on their way to the city, many of the villages ravaged and empty, homes and shops looted dozens of times and then burned or vandalized. The Rebels had extra food trucks with each battalion, and stopped often, handing out food to people who had been beaten and enslaved, and were gaunt and starving.

Ben recalled that piece of pie the elderly woman had given him days back and wondered if she’d used the last bit of food in the cottage to make it. Ben got more and more depressed as the miles rolled by.

“All right,” Ben finally said, still many miles away from Birmingham. “Hold up here.” He gathered Dan and Georgi around him and then got all the batt comms on the horn. “We’ve got to assist the British people in putting their lives back in order. It isn’t enough that we roll through victorious and

hand out food and clothing and then we’re off again. We’re going to have to stop and linger; study what each village and town needs, and then do it. We’ve chased the creeps and the punks into the cities. Fine. Let them stay there. We’ll get to them in due time. First, let’s help the good citizens of this country.”

“General,” Corrie said, “Buddy reporting a town just up ahead where the warlord didn’t leave. He and about fifty of his thugs are still in the town.”

“Well, tell Buddy to take the town.”

“By force?”

“Corrie, that’s usually the way we do it.”

“Buddy says you’d better come up there, General.”

“Give me that headset, Corrie. Eagle to Rat. What’s your problem?” Ben listened for a moment. “Ten? Ten what, boy?” He listened for a few seconds. “Are you saying that the warlord is ten or twelve years old? Are you putting me on? Fine. The same to you, too. Good. I’ll just do that.” He handed the set back to Corrie. “Mount up.”

The long columns of Rebels and their mighty machines of war rumbled forward, stopping at the edge of the town. Ben got out and walked to his son’s side. Buddy handed him binoculars and Ben focused them, then refocused them. He sighed and returned the binoculars.

“Those are children down there, boy.”

“That’s what I told you, Father. Eight, nine, ten years old.”

“Well-armed children.”

“I believe I said that, too.”

“That’s a goddamn fifty-caliber machine gun

they’ve got set up on the edge of town.”

“I know, Father. It took four of them to carry it over there and set it up.”

“Well, how do you plan on taking the town, boy?”

“Me? I’m not running this show. You are. You take the town.”

“Corrie,” Ben said, stalling for time, “do we have communications with the, uh, enemy down there?”

“Yes, sir,” she said with a smile.

“You think this is funny, Corrie?”

“Yes, sir.” Then she doubled over laughing.

Dan strolled up and assessed the situation. He took a bullhorn and walked to the head of the column. “You children down there!” he called, his voice booming over the quiet landscape. “This is Colonel Dan Gray. Formerly of the Queen’s Special Air Service. Now you’ve all had your fun playing at war. It’s time to settle down and get back to school and games and things like that. War is serious business. Very serious business. You children could easily be hurt playing with those dangerous weapons. Come on out now and we’ll have some tea and cakes and assist in finding proper homes for you. I

…”

 

The big fifty started yowling, the slugs clanking off tanks and coming dangerously close to Dan. “Son of a bitch!” the usually unflappable Englishman yelled, and dived headfirst into a water-filled ditch.

The Rebels close in hit the ground and hugged tanks for cover. Dan lifted his head out of the water and yelled, “I’ll whale the tar out of you children!

They’ll be some sore butts this evening, I promise you that.”

The fifty hammered again, the slugs knocking chunks out of the stone wall above Dan’s head.

“Blow it out your arse!” a child’s voice came over the speaker. “This is General Bennie Mays. This town is ours. Move on with you.”

Buddy, lying on the road, turned his head to stare at his father, who was also on his belly, on the road. “Suggestions, Father?”

“At the moment, son, no.” Chapter Five

The column backed up and Dan sent a few of his Scouts in to grab a kid. “And try not to hurt any of them,” Dan added. “I want that pleasure when I lay a belt across their butts.”

The Scouts brought back two, a girl, ten years old, and a boy, nine. The Scouts were bleeding from being bitten and kicked, numerous times.

“Get those bite wounds tended to promptly,” Dan told his people.

The kids were brought before Ben. They were defiant, but scared as well. Ben looked at the weapons the Scouts had taken from them, then stared down at the raggedy and obviously malnourished boy and girl. “All right, now, children. What’s your story?”

The boy and girl exchanged glances and remained silent. Ben pointed to a camp table and chairs that had been set up. “Sit,” he told them.

While the Scouts had been gone, Ben had ordered hot food prepared. Two heaping plates of food were set before the kids and two tall glasses of cold milk.

“Damn me eyes,” the girl said. “Wouldya just look at them vittles.”

“Help yourselves,” Ben told them. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

“This real milk?” the boy asked.

“Honest-to-God, from a cow.”

Ben watched them dig in. They had never been taught table manners-or had forgotten them, ignoring the fork and grasping the spoon like a shovel. Their clothing was nothing more than rags, their faces and hands grimy with dirt, and both of them had fleas. Ben resisted an urge to scratch.

“Do you suppose your friends down in the town would like something to eat?” Ben asked, sitting down at the table with a cup of coffee.

“I “magine,” the girl said. “They ain’t nothin” to eat on in the town. Them people’s poorer than us.”

“Yeah,” the boy said. “All they got is some bread, and not much of that.”

Ben was silent for a time, watching the hungry kids wolf down their food. They were just kids; they both had milk mustaches.

When they had slowed in chowing down, Ben asked, “You been in the outlaw business long, kids?”

“We been survivin’ ever since I can remember,” the boy said. “Runnin’ from slavers, runnin’ from them cannibals, runnin’ from men who want to do bad things to us. All the time runnin’. Finally we come up on Bennie. Then we found some more kids and hooked up with them. Then the Yanks invaded and there was guns everyplace. We pick “em up when we find ‘em. You’re General Ben Raines, ain’t you?”

“Yes. I am.”

“You gonna kill us?” the girl asked.

“Of course not,” Ben said with a smile. “I’m not

here to hurt innocent people. Only bad people.”

“Well, you found an island with a shitpot full of ‘em,” the boy said.

Dan had changed into dry clothing and walked up. The girl spotted him first. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I think we’re in trouble, Jackie.”

“No, you’re not,” Dan said, smiling at them. “Not unless you were behind that machine gun, shooting at me.”

“Oh, no. That wasn’t us. We’re not big enough to handle it,” the girl said.

“What are your names?” Ben asked.

“He’s Jackie,” the girl said, jerking a thumb at the boy. “I’m Lacy.”

“No last names?” Dan asked, taking a seat.

Lacy shrugged her slender shoulders. “We don’t know them if we have any.”

“Dear God,” Dan said.

“God?” Jackie spat out the word. “There ain’t no God, mister. All that talk is nothin” but sheep-shit.”

“We can talk about that later,” Ben said, noting the shocked look on Dan’s face at the boy’s outburst. “Lacy, tell me something, please. And tell me the truth.”

“You want to know if we hurt anybody down in that town, right?”

“You’re very quick. Yes. That’s part of what I’d like to know.”

“Naw. We didn’t hurt nobody. We ain’t never hurt no good people. We wasn’t even gonna take their food, “cause they had so little of it. Bennie’s scared of you and your soldiers, though. He’s … well, he’s about half crazy. He’s the oldest. He’s about … oh, twelve, I guess. The cannibals, they eat his

parents. Him and his sister escaped and the gangs caught them. They done bad things to both Bennie and his sister. They left him in a ditch thinkin” he was about dead. He ain’t never seen his sister since then. What they done to him, I guess it messed up his head. He don’t trust no full-growed person. I asked him once what he was gonna do when he growed up. He went crazy, sort of. Screamin’ and hollerin’ and jumpin’ up and down. Then he just fell down on the ground and went to jerkin’ and foamin’ at the mouth and then got stiff as a board. Then pretty soon he just got up and went on about his business.”

“He’s sick, Lacy,” Ben said. “He probably has what is known as epilepsy. We have medication for that. But how would we get it to him?”

“No. He ain’t got that neither. What he’s got is a big knot on the side of his head. And it gets bigger ever’ month. Right here.” She pointed to her temple.

“Tumor,” Dan said. “He’s probably epileptic as well.”

Ben nodded his agreement. Jackie was busy working on his second plate of food. Lacy said, “Stop that, Jackie. You’ll get sick and you know it.” When he continued gobbling down the food, she jerked the plate from him just as Buddy walked up and whispered in his father’s ear.

“All right,” Ben said. “Do it.”

Buddy walked away.

Ben smiled at Lacy. Her hair was so dirty he couldn’t tell what color it was. “How would you kids like a hot bath and clean clothing?”

Lacy narrowed her eyes. “Let me tell you something,

General. I ain’t no whoor and I ain’t suckin’ dicks for food or clothin’, neither.”

“Good Lord!” Dan said, jumping up from the chair.

“Hey,” Lacy said, cocking her head and staring strangely at Dan. “Where are you people from, anyways? How do you figure a lot of kids stay alive “ceptin” by usin’ their bodies? But I tell you what: I can write my name and read some words. I taught myself that.”

A lot of Rebels had gathered around, silently listening to the words of the kids.

“That’s good, Lacy,” Ben said, his voice husky. He cleared his throat. “Lacy, no one here is going to molest you or make any kind of sexual suggestion to you or to Jackie or to any child, for that matter. We no longer tolerate that kind of behavior in America. People who molest children don’t live very long in the new society. All I asked was if you would like a hot bath and some clean clothing.”

“I sure would,” Jackie said. “I got fleas on me and I stink.”

Lacy stared at Ben through wise eyes. “You’re not a devil.”

Ben laughed. “Well, now, some people might disagree with you on that. But who told you I was a devil?”

“Bennie.”

“Well, Bennie is an awfully sick boy. And if he’ll let us, we’ll help him.”

“He won’t,” Jackie said. He reached for the plate of food that Lacy had taken from him and she slapped his hand away. “I’m still hungry!” he protested.

“Save it for later. They’ll be a lot more hungry times, boy-o.”

“No, there won’t,” Dan said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Your hungry days are over.”

Jersey smiled at Lacy and the girl returned the smile.

Jersey stood up, walked around the table, and held out her hand. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Dan held out his hand to Jackie. “Come on, lad. It’s bath time for you.”

Both kids stood up and turned to go. Lacy paused and looked back at Ben. “You sent that handsome young man off to take the town, didn’t you?”

“He’s my son, Lacy. And yes, I did. But it will be done without anyone being hurt. I promise you that.”

“I don’t know why I believe you, but I do.” She and Jersey strolled off toward a hot bath.

Jackie jerked away from Dan and made another grab for the plate of food and Ben snatched it away just in time. “You’ll have plenty of food later on, Jackie. You, and all your friends down in the town. That’s a promise.”

“We ain’t the only ones hungry in this land,” the boy replied.

“I know.”

When Ben again saw Jackie, about an hour later, he at first didn’t recognize him as the boy walked hand in hand with Dan.

Rebels began bringing snatched and gagged kids

out of the town, some of them kicking and biting and scratching, most of them coming along peacefully as they realized the Rebels, who had slipped up on them like ghosts, were not going to hurt them. They were first fed, then deloused and bathed, then they received haircuts and clean, fresh clothing. Clothing for the kids was beginning to be a problem because of their size, so Rebels took out needle and scissors and thread and began altering spare uniforms and what civilian clothing they had with them.

When the young General Bennie Mays began an inspection of the town he thought was his, he was shocked to find that the only territory he now controlled comprised about one block on the edge of the village and his troops now numbered seven. Behind him lay a solid line of Rebels. He was so frustrated he put his swollen head down on a stone and wept.

“Come on, Bennie,” a girl’s voice reached him through amplification. “These people ain’t gonna hurt nobody. They’re real nice folks. They done give us food and clothes and treated us right. Give it up, Bennie. They got doctors who say they’ll help your head.”

“Turn the machine gun around and kill them Rebels who slipped up behind us,” Bennie ordered through his tears.

But his troops refused. “We’re givin’ it up, Bennie,” an older boy said. “All of us. Chuck just jammed the big gun. It ain’t gonna work no more. It’s busted.”

“You try to walk away from me and I’ll kill you!” Bennie raged through his aching head.

“Then you ain’t no better than the people who’s been chasin’ us all this time,” another boy said.

“I didn’t mean it,” Bennie said, laying his pistol on the ground. “I didn’t mean it. I’m scared.”

They argued for a few moments, not paying any attention to their surroundings. When they looked up again, they were completely ringed by Rebels.

“Steady now, boys,” Buddy said. “Keep your guns on the ground and stand up slow. We have hot food, clean clothing, and baths waiting for you. You’re safe now. Everything is all right. I promise you.” He waved another contingent of Rebels forward.

The boys had never seen so many soldiers. It seemed to them they were looking at thousands. Actually, it was only about twenty-four hundred making up the three battalions. But to the kids it was much more than that.

They surrendered without incident. Even Bennie was awed by the Rebels. The Rebel doctors checked Bennie and after a bath, sent him back to the main hospital after alerting a neurosurgery team. They gave him a tablet that soon put him to sleep so the helicopter ride would not frighten him to death.

Ben rode into the small town and talked with the people there. They were in very bad shape, with no food, and until the Rebels arrived, no hope of finding any. It was late fall in England; the winds were cold, and soon snows would fly. The punks and crud had taken everything the villagers had grown that summer, leaving them nothing.

Ben sent the kids to the rear, left a team behind in the town to assist the villagers, and pushed on.

All over England, Rebels were finding the most

appalling of conditions among the survivors. It was not that the people did not have the will to fight, for they certainly did, they just didn’t have anything to fight with. When the world fell apart a decade back, those of a criminal nature sought out and found guns by raiding military armories and police stations, or just killing those who had guns and taking them.

The governments of America, Canada, England, France, Germany, and many other countries had banned the personal ownership of firearms, so when the Great War came, the law-abiding citizens of those countries got what they always got from big governments: fucked.

And the lawless took over.

“Corrie,” Ben said. “Order every ship that can sail to put to sea and bring back food and clothing and blankets and fuel. We’ll divert some of the materials that were to go to Ireland over here. We’re going to need massive shipments of medicines, including vitamins. We’re going to need flour … oh, shit! We need everything.”

In the cities, in now armed and fortified camps of the creeps and crud and human garbage, the warlords monitored the almost stalled advance of the Rebels. They knew that once the Rebels personally witnessed the terrible conditions in which the lawless had left the citizens, they would be fighting with deep rage in them. There would be no mercy, no pity, no compassion shown the lawless.

The thugs listened to their short-wave radios and cringed at the news: Pontypool, Wales. Hanged ten this day. Ross On Wye. Shot twelve. Tiverton. Executed nine.

“Where in the hell is the lawyers and appeals and such?” a thug questioned.

“I think they’re keeping their heads down and their mouths shut,” another punk answered. “I think Ben Raines would just as soon shoot a lawyer as he would us.”

“When’s he gonna come at us?” Butch Smathers was asked.

“We’re last,” Butch said. “Raines is gonna save us for last, knowin’ that our food supply will be down to nothing in the dead of winter. We’ll be cold and hungry, and our morale will be low. Oh, he’s a smart one, he is. He’s a black-hearted, ruthless man for sure, when it comes to dealin’ with the likes of us. We got to start killin’ dogs and cats and rats and smokin’ and jerkin’ the meat. Tell them in the countryside to start roundin’ up all the cows and sheep and drivin’ them close to the city for pasture. It’s gonna be a cold winter, mates.”

Ben was studying maps when Ike and West walked into his CP and poured coffee. A heavy mantle of frost had covered the land that morning, and Rebels were in winter clothes.

“It’s gettin’ plumb borin’ out there, Ben,” the Mississippi-born-and-reared Ike said. “Resistance is the lightest I’ve ever seen it. Went all day yesterday without firin’ a shot.”

“Yes,” Ben said. “But we’ve still got about seventy percent of the nation to clean up. Look here. Our recon flights show a battle line stretching north to south from Burnham Market down to Brighton. I think Butch’s plan is to have the people still occupying the larger cities to fall back as we take over, then they’ll hold while London is evacuated by sea.”

“And they’ll do that under the blanket of the nastiest, foulest weather,” Dan added, sipping a cup of tea. “Our gunships will be grounded and we don’t have enough patrol boats yet to be very effective. Smathers is a thug and a killer, but he is anything but a fool.”

“Reading between the lines, you’ve found something more about him.”

“All of it unpleasant. He’s ex-army. Paratroops. Went to a lot of special schools, most of them dealing with antiterrorist movements. He was in Northern Ireland. The military had to pull him out; he was too quick to shoot, and enjoyed inflicting pain on people. But the real reason they pulled him out was because he raped a thirteen-year-old girl. He claimed he was interrogating her; Army doctors confirmed she had been raped and sodomized. He was court-martialed and ordered cashiered out of the service. But before that could happen, the world blew up in everybody’s face. There is more, if you wish to hear it.”

“I’ve heard enough now to look for a corner to puke in,” Ben said.

“Yes,” West said. “What a delightful person. I’ve done some terrible things in my life, but I rather like to believe I conducted myself in an honorable fashion.” He smiled. “Most of the time.”

“Let me add just one more thing,” Dan said. “The man has the I.q. of a genius.”

“That’s not surprising,” Lamar Chase said. “Many criminals do. All kinds of theories about that-which I shall not go into at this time.”

“Thank the Lord for small favors,” Ike said.

Dr. Chase smiled sweetly at him. The smile resembled

that of a weasel leaving a henhouse. “Isn’t it about time for your annual hemorrhoid check, Ike?”

“That’s your ass, Lamar!” Ike told him.

“No,” Chase replied. “That your ass, sailor.”

“I got to go,” Ike said, standing up. “See you people.”

He vacated the room to the sounds of Chase chuckling.

“You wouldn’t really do that to Ike, would you, Lamar?” Ben asked.

Chase smiled again. Very sweetly.

“Yeah, you would,” Ben muttered. Chapter Six

Slowly the Rebels began working their way north and Thermopolis and his Eight Battalion joined with Ben and his command as they worked their way toward Birmingham. Wales was now a secure area. And a well-armed area. Ships were docking daily, bringing in much-needed food and clothing and medicines and blankets and fuel.

Ben had ordered the battalions of the Free Irish, along with Danjou’s Seven, Rebet’s Six, and two battalions of the BRF, to face off against those punks, crud, and crap who had strung out along Butch’s battle lines north to south, and not to let anyone through from the west. He told the batt comms to heavily arm each village they cleared and to alert the people about what they were doing.

Ben had a hunch that the villagers would take care of any retreating punks long before they ever reached the Rebel positions.

That news did not surprise Butch Smathers. “Oh, that Raines is a sly one, love,” he said to Lulu. “And low-down dirty mean, too.”

“Let’s get out, Butch,” Lulu urged. “Just say to hell with it and leave.”

Butch shook his head. “Raines is keeping his helicopters and spotter planes in the air over the channel twenty-four hours a day, baby. And he’s taking his good time in getting to us. He’s deliberately letting us sweat. That’s a wicked man, Lulu.”

Lulu was scared and made no attempt to hide it. Butch put an arm around her waist. “I’ve got a plan, baby. Some of us are going to make it. Not a great lot, but some of us. We’ll get out. I promise you.”

The thought of changing their lives and becoming law-abiding citizens never entered the mind of either of them.

The battalions of Rebels and the ever-growing numbers of the British Resistance Forces ringed the city of Birmingham. No one was getting out, and only the Rebels and the BRF wanted in. Coventry, Nuneaton, Dudley, and Walsall had fallen to the Rebels. South of them, punks and crud and creeps had fled east, toward London. But they found their way blocked by troops. They tried to overtake villages and towns and were shot to pieces by the townspeople. Those taken alive were hanged.

The citizens of England had endured too many years of abuse at the hands of the lawless to forget or forgive. Already, even before the land was cleared of the criminal element, people were rewriting the law books and electing officials and setting up police forces. But as Ben Raines had

done over in the Colonies, the laws would be few, they would be clearly understood, they would not be ponderous; and the police, for the most part, would be used to come in after the fact, gather up the bodies of those who could not or would not obey even the simplest of laws, and leave.

And as in America, there were those who did not agree with the new order and refused to adopt the harsh measures. That was their right and no one tried to stop them. No one helped them, either. They were cold stone alone in hard times. They received no aid from the Rebels: no food, no blankets, no grain, no medical aid for the adults, no nothing. The Rebels owned the bat, the ball, and the glove-you could either play the game their way, or go home.

On a cold, blustery late fall morning, Ben stood on the outskirts of Birminghan, lowered his binoculars, and gave the orders. “Commence shelling.”

Everything from 203mm artillery to 87mm mortars began dropping their deadly payloads into the heart of the city. The barrage was a never-ending roll and crash of thunder and smoke and flames and destruction.

To those trapped in the city, it tore not only at flesh and muscle and bone, it ripped nerves raw. There was no place to run and hide and feel safe; one could not get away from the booming crash. The barrage went on all day, all night, all the next day, and all the next night. Then, silence.

From the center of the city, running for blocks in all directions, there was nothing but rubble and

smoke and flames and death. Those left alive in the city staggered out into the streets and stood in fear and awe, gazing through glazed eyes at what Hell must look like.

“Tanks in,” Ben ordered. “Let’s go.”

Resistance was almost nil. En masse, the survivors of the continuous forty-eight-hour bombardment stood in the rubble-strewn streets, their shaking hands in the air. Hoping that the Rebels would not shoot them on the spot. Weeping and trembling and pissing and stinking in their fear. And praying that Rebels would take them and not the BRF.

“Turn them over to the British,” Ben ordered.

“Then kill me now!” one outlaw screamed in panic. “Them people will hang us.”

“That’s your problem,” Ben told him in a cold voice. “And I don’t want to hear a slopjar full of shit about your troubled childhood, or that the coach wouldn’t let you play, or that the prettiest girl in class wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

“You’ll rot in hell for what you’re doin’, General,” a woman told him, standing with her hands in the air. “The Lord preached love.”

“I’m not the Lord,” Ben told her. “If you’ve got a complaint, take it up with the real article. You’ll be face to face with Him soon.”

The prisoners were taken away to be tried in a British court of law. Most would hang or be shot, some would be tossed in the jug for the rest of their lives. A few of the younger ones would be given a second chance.

The Rebels and the BRF began digging out the

creeps who had retreated to the bowels of the city. They pumped teargas and pepper gas and carbon monoxide into the sewers and tunnels and basements and shot the Believers as they staggered out. The Rebels had learned a long time back there was no point in trying to rehabilitate a creepie. It was a waste of time.

The Rebels found several locations where the creeps had kept their human food source. Most of the men and women and children had been reduced to babbling idiots or something very close to it. They were turned over to the British. There was very little anyone could do for them except institutionalize them and care for them as humanely as possible.

The troops pulled out of the city. It was dead.

“Let them in London sweat,” Ben issued the orders. “We take Scotland next.”

The Rebels and the BRF spread out west to east and began their slow march north.

“Looks like my ass is next,” Glasgow Scotty radioed Butch.

“Looks like it,” Butch replied.

“Paratroops into Aberdeen,” Ben ordered. “Secure the seaport and the airport.”

“Watch for paratroopers,” Butch radioed. “Raines is a sneaky bastard. He’ll send jumpers in to attack from your rear.”

“Once the city is secure,” Ben told Dan, who would be commanding the jumpers, “start securing everything north of the Grampian Mountains.”

“I’ve pulled my people out of the north,” Scotty said. “We’re concentrated in and around Glasgow.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Butch warned him. “Get the hell out while you still have time.”

“And go where?” Scotty asked bitterly. “That son of a bitch who runs Edinburgh hates me as much as I hate Ben Raines. I can’t head over there. We’ve done took everything worth takin’ in the north. I sure as hell ain’t going to North Ireland. So where does that leave me?”

“Fucked, I guess,” Butch said.

“That just about sums it up,” Scotty replied. “Glasgow Scotty out.”

Butch clipped the mic and sighed. “Raines has got a lot of England to cover before he reaches Scotland. But reach it he will. I don’t like you, Scotty. But I wouldn’t wish Ben Raines and the Rebels on anybody.”

“Butch! Butch!” an aide called. “Switch to our coastline frequency.”

“Go ahead, coastwatcher.”

“Raines has got a whole bunch of old rust-buckets runnin’, Butch. He’s stretchin’ them out from just off the Suffolk coast all the way down to Kent. There must be a hundred of them. He’s got them rigged for helicopter landin’s. Got pads on them and everything. And they’re all armed with heavy machine guns and mortars and stuff.”

“The choppers?”

“No, God damn it, Butch! The ships! They’re floating forts. He’s taken what looks like turret guns off old British tanks and mounted them

suckers on the ships. And he’s got twin 40mm Bofers on “em, too. Butch, he’s trapped us.”

“Just calm down and hang tight, coastwatcher. Keep me informed. Butch out.”

“Has he, Butch?” Lulu asked.

“Has he what?”

“Trapped us.”

“He’s put the lid on, Lulu. But he hasn’t screwed it down tight. Not yet. He’s got to be thin. Real thin. He’s got troops all over the island, and now he’s got them at sea.”

“And that means what, Butch?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we can punch through and scatter, get away that way. I don’t know. I got to think on this, Lulu. Raines don’t hardly make mistakes. But he may have made one this time.”

Not really. The crews manning the ships were not Rebels. The blockade was Mr. Carrington’s idea, and the average age of the crews on board ship and behind the guns was sixty-five. It turned out that Mr. Carrington was actually a retired British admiral. He’d been a young sixteen-year-old sailor stranded on shore and had picked up the first rifle he’d found and fought with the Army. Now, some sixty years later, he just rounded up a bunch of his cronies, from all branches of service, and put them to work. They all needed something to do anyway.

“Look lively on deck, boys!” Carrington shouted from the bridge. “Stop that dawdling about and get that equipment secured. Tight and right, now. Hop to it.”

“Hop” was not the right choice of words, since some of the men had trouble walking. But they managed. They were British, after all.

Back in the 1960’s, it was “The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.” Now it was, “The Rebels are coming, the Rebels are coming.” The Rebels were rolling thirty and forty miles a day north, oftentimes without even firing a shot. When the punks and crud and crap heard the Rebels were in striking distance, their resolve broke wide open and they fled north, toward Scotland.

Ben called a halt when he discovered they were outdistancing their supplies. He halted the convoys and told Ike and Georgi and West to take their battalions and plenty of artillery and see about Liverpool, which from his position lay just about due west.

“And check out the tunnel that connects Liverpool with Birkenhead, if it’s still intact. If it is, that’s where you’ll find some creepies.”

“And the Beatles,” Ike said with smile. His smile faded. “If the city’s full of crud, Ben?”

“Take it down.”

“Sherwood Forest is not far from here,” Beth said. “That sure rings a bell with me. Why is that, General?”

Ben smiled. “Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Beth. Take some people and go look at it if you like.”

She shook her head. “No. I’d rather keep it the

way my mother used to read it to me. I remember now. I think it was my mother.”

Like a lot of people who were young when the Great War hit, Beth had blocked out a lot of her past. It was the kids who had just been born when the world collapsed who had the worst of it by far-like Lacy and Jackie and Bennie.

“Be a hell of a fight when we do hit Scotty’s position,” Thermopolis said that evening. He and Rosebud had come over to visit friends in Ben’s One Battalion.

“It’ll be a scrap for sure.” He looked up as Corrie walked in.

“Dan and his jumpers have secured the airport and the seaport at Aberdeen, General. Resistance was practically nil. Planes will be leaving in the morning to resupply him, and the ships that you ordered out of port ahead of Dan are only a few hours away from Aberdeen.” She hesitated and Ben caught it.

“What’s wrong, Corrie?”

“We’re getting a lot of traffic out of the Continent, General-none of it good. Dr. Chase says they may be facing another plague over there, one that could make the Black Death outbreak in the fourteenth century look like a case of chicken pox.”

“What did he call it, Corrie?”

“Bubonic and pneumonic. He’s ordered vaccines to be flown over here from the States, General.”

“Flown?”

“Yes, sir. Another group just graduated flight school and they’re rarin” to go.”

“All right, Corrie, thank you. Oh, have Lamar crank up some labs in Ireland and start producing the vaccine … why are you smiling?”

“He did that yesterday. But he needs whatever is coming over on the planes. How do you treat this crap, anyway, General?”

“Hell, I don’t know. With antibiotics, I suppose. And I’m sure that old goat will personally line up all the troops to see me get the first shot-in the butt.”

“Drop your pants and bend over,” Chase told Ben the following morning.

“Well, at least you didn’t line up the troops and have them watch,” Ben said.

“I thought about it.”

“I’m sure you did.”

Chase popped him and Ben straightened up. “What is that stuff, Lamar, antibiotics?”

“Antibiotics comwiththe exception of penicillin — are used to treat the plague, Ben. What I gave you is a vaccine to prevent you from getting the disease. I’ve got teams setting up now all over Ireland and England to give shots. Get this island secured quickly, Ben. And I mean fast. We’ve got to inoculate every decent man, woman, and child or we’re going to lose thousands.”

“And be at risk ourselves?” Ben added.

“Not really. It’s controllable. What we’ve got to watch out for is the pneumonic strain. It’s nearly always fatal.”

“Why doesn’t penicillin work? I thought that was the magic bullet.”

Chase sighed. “Because it isn’t broad enough. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“No.”

“Then stick to fighting wars and leave the medicine to me.”

“Okay,” Ben said with a smile.

“I’ve started a flea eradication program and while we’re at it we’ll give the dogs and cats their shots for rabies and other canine and feline diseases. And we’ll start a rat eradication program.”

“Good luck. That’s been tried for centuries and so far as I know, nothing has worked yet.”

“O ye of little faith,” Chase told him, then left the CP to start giving shots to Ben’s team.

Moments later Corrie came in, rubbing her butt. “That man has the touch of someone shoeing horses,” she said, and Ben laughed at her.

Beth followed her in. “Doctors give lousy shots,” she said, then lifted a clipboard. “Ike reports contact with creepies only in Liverpool. It seems that the street punks have fled north into Scotland. Ike says the city appears to have been trashed, much of it destroyed. He’s going to start bringing it down.”

“What’s the word from Dan and his jumpers?”

“He’s secured his objective and is moving out into the countryside.”

“Corrie, advise all batt comms that as soon as the inoculation program is accomplished, we’ll move out. Ike, Georgi, and West will work the coastline and we’ll drive straight up from here. Tina, Thermopolis, the Wolf Pack, and the remainder of the BRF take the east side of the island

and work north. We’ll all regroup just south of the Cheviot Hills for the assault on Scotland. And Corrie … advise Admiral Carrington and all others patrolling the English Channel by sea or air that no vessel is to be allowed through from the Continent. We can’t risk it. Order any boats, ships, whatever, to turn around and head back. If they refuse, sink them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ben sat alone in his office, staring out the window. That was a hard decision to have to make, for not all the people fleeing the Continent would be outlaws and creeps. But when you ran the show, there was no one left to hand the buck. You made the decision, and you lived with it.

“Shit!” Ben muttered. Chapter Seven

Personal pets of the Rebels, and there were many, from chickens to gerbils, were carefully bathed and sent back to the rear for safekeeping in a flea-free and rodent-free area. Smoot and Chester were being looked after by the hospital staff at Chase’s main unit, which had now been relocated in Ireland.

Ike had set back outside of Liverpool and let artillery and gunships devastate the city before moving his people in to mop it up. It had been a hard decision to make until he got word that the punks and creeps had destroyed the churches and twin cathedrals overlooking the Mersey, had burned all the libraries to the ground, and in general had left the city in a shambles. It was a much easier decision to make after that.

The Rebels knew they had not killed all the Believers in Liverpool; there would be a few still lurking deep in the bowels of the city, in dark, stinking pockets. But the back of the hideous movement had been broken, and when or if the Believers again surfaced, the English people would be ready, and more important, able to deal with them.

“Colonel Gray says it’s very boring up at his location,” Corrie told Ben. “He’ says he’s spending most of his time trying to see the Loch Ness monster.”

“Tell him to take a picture of it when he spots it. And to stand easy, we’re just about ready to move. Waiting on Ike to resupply.”

On a cold, sleety morning, Ben crawled into his wagon and looked at Corrie. “Let’s head for Scotland, Corrie.”

She lifted her mic and the columns surged forward.

“Did you remember to pack the tire chains, Cooper?” Jersey asked.

“Of course I did. What do you think I am, an idiot?”

Jersey smiled. “I’ll let that one just die a natural death. I’m feeling charitable this morning.”

Ben looked at her. “Are you sick?”

“Feel great. I’ve decided to stop picking on Cooper.”

“I think she’s in love,” Cooper said.

“I just decided to start picking on Cooper,” Jersey said. “Will you stop tailgating the damn tank, Cooper?”

Ben smiled. Everything was back to normal with his team.

The columns moved through what before the war was a very heavily populated area. Now many of the towns were deserted, utterly void of human life.

“Eerie,” Beth muttered.

Even Ben admitted to himself that the silent

villages and towns were working on his nerves.

In Bradford and Leeds, the Rebel Scouts finally found signs of life and radioed the news back to the columns. “It’s a trap, Father,” Buddy said, calling in from the outskirts of Bradford. “They want us to think they are solid citizen types. But they just don’t fit the mold. It’s a setup.”

“Ten-four, son. Back out of there. We’re rolling up.”

The three Rebel battalions rolled forward, buttoned-up tanks spearheading, and stopped at the edge of town. Ben smiled at the huge banner that the people had stretched high above and completely across the highway. WELCOME GENERAL RAINES AND THE REBELS.

“My, my,” Cooper said. “I wonder if they have soft drinks and cookies, too.”

“They must think we’re fools,” Jersey said.

The Rebels waited, advancing no further, watching the crowd of men and women at the edge of town, and watching until they got awfully nervous.

While Dan was north, commanding the jumpers, his battalion had linked with Ben’s One. Ben also had a contingent of Free Irish and BRF people. Since he was light on infantry, Ben was heavy with armor and artillery.

Ben was amused as they played the cat-and-mouse game. But he quickly tired of it. He got out of the wagon and took a speaker mic. “Give it up, people. You haven’t fired at us, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt as to your intentions.

Put your hands in the air and walk toward us. Issue orders to those in the town to do the same. Do it right now, or I’ll level the town with artillery.”

The fifty or so men and women-mostly men — standing under the welcome banner exchanged glances. Ben watched through binoculars as they spoke briefly, then slowly pulled pistols from under their coats and laid them on the pavement. All around them, in the weed-filled ditches and fields, men rose slowly from hidden ambush positions, their hands in the air, and walked slowly toward the line of tanks.

“Let me see the people in the town start coming out,” Ben’s voice boomed over the cold landscape.

“I got to reach under my jacket for a walkie-talkie!” a man yelled, the words just reaching the column. “Don’t shoot.”

“Go ahead,” Ben told him.

“Same thing is happening in Leeds,” Corrie informed him.

“Dan’s XO reporting a mass surrender. Not a shot fired so far.”

People began filing out of the town, hands in the air.

“Bring that man with the walkie-talkie to me,” Ben said.

The two men faced each other. One was clear-eyed, clean-shaven, wearing clean BDU’S. The other stank of old sweat and grime, his clothing filthy, his eyes red-rimmed, and his face showing the strain of years of crime and brutality.

“Children?” Ben asked him.

“We got some,” the man said. “They’re with the women. We didn’t think it would work. But we didn’t know what else to do. What happens now?”

“You will be turned over to British authorities.”

“In other words, we’re dead.”

“Some of you.”

“We had a good thing goin’ “til you popped in.”

Ben looked at the man’s slovenly appearance. “Yes. I can see that you have been living in the lap of luxury.”

“Beats work,” the outlaw admitted.

“Any sickness among you?” Ben asked, not putting any emphasis on his words.

The outlaw shook his head. “Some of the kids got colds, that’s all. Nothin” major. What’s the matter, General comand yeah, I know who you are — you afraid we’ll contaminate your pure and precious do-gooder army?”

“Something like that.” Ben turned and walked away. He leaned against a fender and sipped hot coffee, watching as BRF people tied the prisoners’ hands behind their backs and tossed them into trucks for the long ride back to a prison in the south of the country where the slime and crud were being held, pending trial.

Buddy returned from his inspection of the town. “Filthy,” he said. “These people lived like degenerates. We don’t want to bivouac here.”

“No. We’ll roll on. Our eyes in the skies say there is a town just north of here that appears to be deserted. Check it out.”

The town was void of human life and had been for some time. The Rebels found a huge mass grave on the edge of town and Ben ordered it opened. The bones of men and women and children and even family pets were uncovered.

“They appear to have been shot,” a Rebel doctor said, after an examination of a few of the skeletons. “And judging from the size of this grave, there must be several hundred people buried here.”

“Cover it up,” Ben said. “We’ll probably never know the why of it.”

“General,” Corrie said. “Our eyes in the skies say there is a mass retreat north. Highways are clogged with vehicles.”

“Where are Tina and Therm?”

“They’ve pushed all the way up to Middlesbrough.”

“We can’t send gunships in to strafe those retreating because we don’t know for sure who they are comeven though we all have a good idea.” Ben looked at a map. “There’s ian airport near there. Have planes pick them up and take them to Aberdeen. Also have planes pick up Georgi’s people and set them down at this airstrip here.” He pointed to a small town just north and somewhat west of the Grampian Mountains. “Tell them to carry all the supplies they can stagger with. And start supply planes moving now. When they are in position, have them move toward the south. Dan and Tina’s battalions will secure Dundee and Perth, Therm’s bunch will join Georgi and move down to here, on the west side of the mountain

range. That will give us four battalions to hold from the north while we use troops, armor, and artillery to smash in from the south.”

Troops began moving and shifting while the punks and creeps and crud in the cities listened and waited nervously.

“Raines is boxing them in,” Butch said. “It won’t be long now.” He looked at a clipboard filled with dispatches from communications. “I wish I could figure out what is happening on the Continent. There appears to some type of mild panic going on over there. But I haven’t the foggiest what it is. It’s baffling.”

“Whatever could it be?” Lulu questioned.

Butch shook his head. “I just don’t know. But I got a feelin’ in my guts that it’s bad.”

“Butch!” the radio operator called. “Two of them old tubs out in the Channel just sank a couple of boats trying to make it across.”

“That don’t make any sense. Why would anybody over there want to come over here?” He frowned, his brow furrowing. “Folks, this is gettin’ weird.”

Using a small two-engine plane, Ben crisscrossed the island south of the Cheviot Hills as his troops got into place. Jersey and Corrie sat in the rear seats.

“How come you picked this old baby to fly in, General,” the pilot asked, “instead of a chopper? I mean, I’m flattered, but puzzled.”

“I don’t trust helicopters,” Ben said. “Or boats. Helicopters fall out of the sky and boats sink.

One engine quits on this plane, you can fly it with the other one. Both engines fail, it glides and you can land it on a highway. Now you know.”

The pilot, who was both fixed-wing- and chopper-qualified, laughed. “Well … I guess you got a point, sir. I never looked at it quite that way.”

Ben smiled. “Look down there, Jersey, Corrie. That’s highway A696. Pretty impressive from the air, isn’t it?”

Rebel armor was rolling north, toward the Cheviot Hills. The tanks and artillery stretched for a long way. The road flashed under them as they headed for the coast highway. The pilot circled for a moment before he sat down on a grassy strip just south of Berwick Upon Tweed, the northernmost town in England before crossing the river into Scotland.

“See those white cattle down there?” the pilot said. “I read about them. They’re wild. They’re called the wild white cattle of Chillingham. They’re led by a king bull and they’re direct descendants of the cattle that lived in Britain thousands of years ago.”

“You’re puttin’ me on!” Jersey said.

“No, I’m not. I read it in a tourist guide and talked to folks in this area when I flew in supplies. Even though these people were hungry, they wouldn’t kill those cattle. That kind of makes you feel good about things, you know?”

“Yes. Then there is hope for humankind yet,” Ben said. “Unselfish acts like that can lift the hearts of us all.”

“That’s pretty, General,” Jersey said. “Did you ever write poetry?”

Ben laughed. “When I was young and in love, Jersey. It was really bad. Luckily, my father found it and burned it.”

Jersey and Corrie exchanged glances. They wanted Ben off the subject of love. Both knew he was still in love with Jerre and probably would be until his death. They knew that Ben publicly said that she was behind him. They also knew-being females-that Ben was lying, and both of them hoped that someday some good man would love them as much as Ben loved Jerre.

Ben met with his daughter, Tina, commander of Nine Battalion, and Therm, who commanded Eight Battalion. They were only minutes from lifting off to the north.

“Everyone in your command’s been inoculated?” Ben asked.

“That’s ten-four, Dad. And so have Dan and his jumpers.”

“That’s it, then. Every one of our people is secure and most of the residents comt are not opposed to us, that is.” He shook hands with Therm and kissed Tina. “You two be careful. Godspeed.”

It was a bitterly cold day, and the winds were coming straight off the North Sea as Ben stood and watched the cargo planes take off, make their slow half circle, and turn north over the sea.

“Let’s get back,” Ben said. “Jump-off time is looking us in the face.”

“We play by the same rules,” Ben told his people. “We take it slow and clear every town and village as we go. We make sure we don’t have any hostiles behind us when we pull out. We crash through tomorrow at dawn and take Hawick and Dumfries before nightfall. We’re not going to get ahead of our supply trucks this time. That’s it.”

They needn’t have worried about hostiles at their backs. Dumfries and Hawick were void of unfriendlies. Each town had only a few hundred citizens left in it, all of them hungry and sick and cold.

“They left us several days ago, General,” a man told Ben. “Took every scrap of food we had and fled north like frightened rabbits.”

“I’m going to probably destroy your cities,” Ben told the man, and the others who had crowded around. “I don’t see the point of losing people to save a building.”

“Then bring them down, General,” a woman said. “They’re as useless to us now as horns on a hen.”

The medics checked out the people and the supply trucks dropped off food, blankets, clothing, and fuel.

“All units settled in for the night and reporting no contact with the enemy today,” Corrie told Ben. “It’s a milk run.”

Buddy shook his head. “They do it every time. They’re as predictable as a good watch. They run to the cities. I don’t understand it.”

“They’re punks, boy,” his father told him.

“They feel safe with all that concrete and steel around them. Street punks are like rats. They’ve got to have a hole to run into and hide in. They’re cowards-just like most bullies. Anyone who joins a gang is a punk. Have you ever seen a bully pick on anyone his own size? I haven’t.”

“But they must know by now that we’re going to grind them down.”

“I’m sure some of them do, son. But look how we fight. We don’t leave them any holes to hide in. They don’t have any place to run. They actually help us box them in.”

A runner came in and handed Ben a note from Communications. Corrie was relaxing away from her radio … at Ben’s orders.

“People are beginning to flee the Continent,” Ben said, reading the note aloud by a hissing gas lantern. “Carrington’s armada has sunk more than half a dozen ships in two days. It must really be getting bad over there.”

“You had to give those orders to sink those ships, General,” Jersey said. “You didn’t have any choice in the matter. You had to contain that plague.”

Ben smiled at her. “Thank you, Jersey. Keep reminding me of that, please.”

A Scout came in and set her rifle down and shrugged out of a light pack. “It’s clear for forty miles north up A74, General. Not one bogie to be found anywhere. The industrial belt must be filled up with punks.”

“Yes,” Ben agreed. “The area from Glasgow to Edinburgh is crawling with punks and

other assorted two-legged vermin. But it won’t be for long.”

Corrie returned and Ben looked up in surprise. “I thought I told you to relax.”

“You did. I went over to Communications to visit with friends. It’s jumping over there, General.” She sat down behind a bank of radios that was set up for her nightly in Ben’s CP’-WHEREVER that might be comand slipped on a head set.

“What’s happening, Corrie?” Ben asked.

“All up and down the European coast, starting about an hour ago, there have been a series of explosions. No one can figure out what’s happening.”

A runner from Communications hustled in and pinned a map to a wall, then began placing tiny colored flags along the coastline. “These are the newest ones, Corrie,” he said. “They’re coming in fast now. These were received by radio. Not confirmed.” He left the room.

Ben walked over and studied the map for a moment. “Those are ports. Get some birds up, Corrie. I want to know what the hell is going on.”

“Right, sir.”

Ben looked around the room. “The rest of you people get some sleep. We’ve still got a war to fight.”

An hour later, they were all confirmed. All up and down the French coast, fires were burning out of control. Corrie received a communiqu@eand wrote it out, handing the paper to Ben.

He read it with his expression growing grimmer.

“What is it, General?” Jersey asked. She had paid no attention to Ben’s order to go to bed.

“The French Resistance forces are blowing all the ships and ports along the coast. Same with other resistance forces in Europe. They’re trying to contain the Black Death over there, keep infected people from leaving by sea.”

“They’re signing their own death warrants,” she said softly.

“Yes,” Ben’s reply was just as softly given. “In order to save others. What next, Lord?” he asked. “What next?” Chapter Eight

As usual, Dr. Lamar Chase had flown up and was ready to set up a mobile field hospital very close to the front lines. He was summoned and was now speaking through an interpreter to the commander of the Free French. Ben had coordinated drop zones for the vaccine and planes had already left the states. Ben had ordered vaccine flown in from the states, and had put the laboratories working around the clock.

He listened as Chase conferred with the Free French. “Save the vaccine for those who do not show any signs of the disease. It’s useless for those already infected. Anyone showing signs of edema is gone. Pneumonic plague is a killer ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Save the vaccine for those showing no signs and save the other medicines we’re dropping for the less severe cases of the infected. Isolate the patients. We’re dropping you streptomycin, tetracyline, and sulfonamides to treat the infected. Spray yourselves with a flea repellent. Burn the dead. Burn down the houses. Clear out trash and garbage. Then pray,” he signed off.

Chase turned to face Ben. “Don’t let any ships

through, Ben. Not a one. We can’t take the chance.”

“I understand, Lamar. Do we have any reported cases here in England?”

“A few. None up here. And I don’t think we will. But I have a strong suspicion that London is only a few days, a week at most, toward becoming a death city. Didn’t you get reports before we sailed that troops from the Continent had come over to beef up London?”

“Yes. But how about those that we know pulled out by sea right after we landed?”

Chase spread his hands. “Who knows?”

“Wait a minute!” Corrie said, turning around in her chair. “That might account for the strange messages that Communications has been receiving. Or had, I should say. They stopped about ten days ago.”

“What messages?” Ben asked.

“They were garbled and hysterical and no one could make any sense out of them. Communications pinpointed them as coming from south of Cape Horn.”

“Can you recall anything else about them?” Chase asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “The words were “Sick, dying, alone.” Then, “Ships wallowing. All dead. All dead.” That was the last we heard. No more transmissions.”

“Ben, what do we have in South America?” Chase asked.

“Chaos. Wars. A total breakdown.”

“No one you could radio to sink those ships?”

“Oh, no. Nothing.”

“Right now, those ships are floating flea factories. The rats are eating off the dead. They’ll be enough dead flesh to keep them alive for weeks, maybe months. Whatever inhabited land those ships bump into …” He shook his head. “God help the people who might live there.”

“Can you imagine somebody boarding those ships?” Jersey said, then shuddered. “Jesus!”

Ben moved to a world map and studied it. “Hell, it’s probably seven thousand miles from here to Cape Horn. Even if we had the ships to send, it’d be like that needle in a haystack. I guess we have to leave it in the hands of the Lord.”

“Yes,” Chase agreed. “But I have to conclude that He hasn’t looked too favorably on Earth the past decade or so. Maybe this is Hell after all.” He threw up his hands. “What do I know? I’m just a doctor trying to keep decent people alive in a world gone mad.”

Ben smiled. “You hear your own words, Lamar? “Keeping decent people alive.” You judge just as much as I do, and I’m not sure that either of us has that right.”

Chase looked at him for a long moment. “Well, Ben, maybe I don’t have the right, since I did take that oath when I became a doctor. Maybe you don’t either. But in this crazy, gone-wild world, if mortal men don’t make those decisions, we may as well all go back to the caves and paint ourselves blue.”

Ben nodded. “Maybe you’re right, Lamar. Maybe you’re right.”

“When do you kick off this next campaign?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

But it was the shortest and least bloody campaign in anyone’s memory. The news of the Black Death now sweeping Europe had reached those in the cities of Scotland. They didn’t wish to die in some horrible fashion any more than anyone else, so it didn’t take them long to decide which was the best way to go. Ninety percent of them elected to throw down their guns and walk out under a white flag of surrender, knowing they would be given the precious vaccine if for no other reason than to keep the disease off this island.

“Bastards!” Ben said. “Now we’ve got to give precious medicines to crap like that while withholding it from decent people. Goddamn sons of bitches.”

Ben was so mad he stalked up and down the highway like some enraged panther, while his Rebels gave him a wide berth. Finally he calmed down long enough to study a map for a moment. Then he turned to Corrie. “What’s up here in the Shetland Islands, Corrie?”

“I can answer that for you,” Dan Gray said. “I had my pilots check it out. They are totally void of human life.”

“Get ships readied, Corrie,” Ben ordered. “We’ll haul this human garbage up there and dump them. Buddy!”

“Sir!” Buddy jumped.

“Take two companies up to the Shetlands and either destroy or sail back everything that’ll float. We’re going to isolate these people up there and see if any develop the plague. I’ll send ships up with food and other provisions for them. But, I’ll be Goddamned if I’ll waste vaccines and medicines on trash like this.”

“Father, if just one of them has the Black Death, they all will die.”

“Did you hear me, boy?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Then move!”

“Moving, Father. Like right now!”

“You black-hearted son of a bitch!” a motley-looking warlord screamed when he heard the news. “We demand our rights. You hear me, you bastard? We’re prisoners of war.”

Glasgow Scotty sat on an overturned bucket and kept his head down and his mouth shut. He’d been a convict before the Great War and quickly fell back into the con’s role: you kept your mouth shut and didn’t make waves. He felt they were getting a raw deal, but he was realist enough to see Ben’s point in doing this.

“Shut up, cheese-dick,” a Rebel guard whispered to the warlord. “You want to die right here and now?”

“Fuck you, pretty-boy,” the warlord said. “Hey, Raines,” he shouted. “You peckerhead. I’m talkin’ to you.”

But Ben was not going to be baited. “Split them up and house them in those old prisons you found, Dan.”

“Right, sir. It’s better treatment than they deserve, at that.”

“Hey!” a street punk yelled. “I’m hungry, man.”

“Eat shit,” Jersey told him.

“They’ve packed it in,” Butch told his commanders. “Scotty and the rest of them surrendered hoping to get vaccine for the plague and Raines refused to give it to them. He’s sending them all to the Shetlands to isolate them.”

“At least they’re alive,” a warlord pointed out.

“Sure. Until the British courts get hold of them,” Butch said. “Then they’re dead.”

“I ain’t gonna hand my ass over to Raines on no platter,” Acey said. “I got too many marks against me to do that. They’re gonna have to kill me.”

“How say the rest of you?” Butch put the question to them.

It was unanimous. They voted to fight to the death.

“There are no trees,” Buddy reported back to his father. Three days had passed. “And there are no people, either.”

“How was the weather?”

“Cold, but not as bad as one would think. I did some reading on the Shetlands. It’s very interesting.” He took another look at his father’s face and wisely decided this was not the time for a dissertation on the climate of the Shetland Islands. “Scalloway and Lerwick are ready to receive the, ah, guests. There is not a boat that will float anywhere. Will they be guarded, Father?”

“Not by us. The BRF has agreed to man patrol boats on a twenty-four-hour basis. Get the outlaw leaders in here, son, please.”

Ben faced the group. “There are still a number of sheep and Shetland ponies where you will be going.

They damn well better be there when we decide to try you. If one hair on their bodies is harmed, I guarantee you all that I will strap parachutes on you and drop you in the middle of the most highly infected part of Europe.”

Glasgow Scotty and the other leaders of crud and slime took Ben at his word. His face frightened them, his voice frightened them, and just being in his presence frightened them. Where they had at first been defiant, they were now humbled and awed by being around the highly professional Rebel army. They had witnessed people of all faiths, all colors, all nationalities, working together like smoothly running machinery. They had yet to hear one racial slur from anybody. It amazed them.

“We ain’t gonna hurt no one up there, General,” a woman said. “We’re just hopin’ you’ll forget all about us.”

“Lady,” Ben said, “and I use that noun only because I don’t know your name and don’t want to know your name if I was in my own country, I’d shoot every goddamn one of you and be done with it. But you’re the responsibility of the British now. And may God help them find the strength to deal with scum like you. Get this shit out of my office, Buddy.”

The next day, Ben and the Rebels began the job of clearing the Scottish cities of the Believers.

It was easier this time, for the warlords and street punks had been eager to give their interrogators the locations of the creepies and all the ways in and out of their hiding places. The Rebels pumped teargas and pepper gas into the sewer tunnels and basements and all the dark and odious places where

creeps lived their disgusting lives and practiced their cannibalism.

All along the once heavily populated and urbanized stretch from Greencock to Edinburgh, the air was heavy with the residues of teargas and pepper gas and the smell of death. The Believers would stagger out of their stinking holes and the Rebels would shoot them. Or the Rebels would fill the basements with fire from flame-throwers, seal the entrances and exits closed with heavy explosives, or blow up the buildings and turn the basements into sealed tombs.

In London, the street punks and gang leaders sweated it out, listening to Rebel chatter on their radios. The Rebels talked on open frequencies now, wanting Butch Smathers and the others to hear them. They talked about how many creepies they’d killed that morning or that afternoon or that night, and how they died. It was pure psychological warfare, and it was working. Many trapped in London were breaking under the strain; a half a dozen a day were sticking pistols in their mouths and ending it. Many others were right on the edge of insanity.

“Come on and get us, then, you son of a bitch!” the warlord Duane screamed into a microphone. “Goddamn you all to hell. We don’t want to hear no more of your shit!”

Commander Drake of the BRF told several of his colleagues that Ben Raines was the hardest man he had ever known.

“He’s what we need at this time,” one Brit countered. “He’s giving us a second time. And God forbid we repeat the mistakes of the past.”

Butch’s troops, facing the Rebels, the Free Irish,

and the British Resistance Forces along the line that stretched north to south, tried to goad the freedom-loving men and women into a fight. They screamed obscenities over the air to them. It didn’t work. Ben’s troops silently stared across the distance at the street punks and warlords and outlaws.

The skies grayed and began dumping snow over the land, adding to the outlaws’ woes. It didn’t bother the Rebels. They had fought for years in all sorts of weather, from the blistering heat of the desert to the frozen ground of Alaska. They had every piece of equipment necessary to stay as comfortable as possible, under the circumstances. They waited.

London Lulu lifted a glass of whiskey to her mouth. Her hands were shaking. She downed the whiskey neat and banged the shot glass to the table-top. “Why is he doing this?” she asked. “Why?”

“Take it easy, kid,” Butch said. “Why? He’s punishing us for past sins. I’ve gone back and read everything I could find about Ben Raines and some of the books he wrote back in the old days. He never believed in that sentimental slop from the mouths of social workers and liberals and do-gooders. Raines wrote that society should give a criminal at least one chance to redeem himself. After that, if he fucked up bad again, get rid of him. Raines wrote that values should be taught in school as well as in the home. He’s a strange and complex man, Lulu. I wish he had been in power when I was growing up. I wish his views had been accepted and practiced.”

“Would you have changed, Butch?”

“Sure.” He smiled. “That’s the beauty of the

Rebel philosophy, kid. One’s options are very limited. Go straight or get dead.”

“But he’s not goin’ to give us a chance to do that, is he, Butch?”

Butch shook his head. “He gave us that chance, kid. When he hit the island, he gave us surrender terms. We refused. What happened up in Glasgow was a fluke. That mass surrender took him by surprise. That won’t happen here. When he attacks, it’ll be from three directions: north, south, and west. When he gets close enough, he’s going to give us about a week or so of heavy artillery. He’s going to turn this city into a shambles, and our nerves will be in a shambles, too. Oh, he’ll take prisoners. But no more than a couple hundred.”

“Butch, let’s appeal to the Brits out there. They’ll cut us some slack. I’m sure of it.”

“No good, kid. The BRF, they gave Raines carte blanche. This is his show. Raines is this island’s lifeline, and they know it. They’re not going to interfere. It would be suicide and they know it.”

“It’s funny, Butch. Not ha-ha funny, but strange. We’re sittin’ here talking about our deaths. And I don’t want to die. I mean, man, when that big door is slammed, it’s over. Jesus God, if they’d just give me another chance, I’d change.”

Butch laughed and poured a drink of whiskey. The whiskey was running out. The food was running out. They had no medicine. “No, you wouldn’t, Lulu. And neither would I. Oh, we’d go straight for a time; but not for very long. We’d see something that we wanted, that belonged to someone else, and we’d take it. Whether it was a car, or bike, or whatever. You see, Lulu, we didn’t have

those hard options comin’ up. And people like you and me, and all the rest of this so-called army trapped in London, we got to have ultimatums. Ben Raines knows this. Ben Raines knows that you must have some hard and fast and permanent rules that cannot be broken or changed for anyone. That’s the only way democracy can really work. And he’s proved that time and time again.”

“Fuck Ben Raines!” Lulu said, her voice hardening. “Them rules is too restrictive.”

“Actually, Lulu, they’re not. They’re just rules that people like us couldn’t, or wouldn’t, live under. Anyway, it’ll be over soon. Then we won’t have to worry about it.”

“Jesus, Butch!” She fumbled for the whiskey bottle. “How can you take it so matter-of-factly?”

“Because there is no other way to take it, Lulu. We’re trapped. We can’t go north, south, east, or west. Ben Raines is not going to accept our surrender. And you know why? He’s smart.” Butch tapped the side of his head. “There are two reasons for it. One: With the island in such bad shape, the survivors can’t waste the time housing us, feeding us, guarding us, providing us with medical attention. Not after Raines leaves. Two-and this is what I believe is his main reason for isolating Scotty and the others, and for not accepting our surrender: Raines believes we have the plague among us. And so do I.”

“Oh, no, Butch. I don’t want to die that way. No!”

“We’ll never know for sure, love, but Raines is giving us more of a break than he’s giving Scotty and the others. He’s going to kill us quick. Scotty